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MISCELLANEA: VARIOUS
PRELIMINARY
GENERAL INFORMATION
ABOUT CELTS.
MISCELLANEA: VARIOUS
PRELIMINARY
GENERAL INFORMATION
ABOUT CELTS.
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REVIVAL, REBIRTH AND RENAISSANCE, YES!
RESURRECTION LIKE BEFORE, NO!
"It’s by following the walking one that we find the way.”
Comparison is a fundamental mental process: grouping some facts together under common
categories but also noticing differences. Such connections and relationships are the basis of
thought and science. Otherwise, there are only isolated facts without links between them. It is
therefore on the basis of comparison that generalizations, interpretations and theories are
formed. Comparison creates new ways of viewing and organizing the world.Comparative
religion is therefore old as the hills. Herodotus was already doing it. As far as ancient religions
are concerned, this intellectual approach has produced many books stored in the
"comparative mythology" shelves since Max Muller (1823-1900).As far as religions are
concerned, it is quite different.Each religion was, of course, compared to those with which it
was competing but first to denigrate or affirm its superiority.The first elements of a more
objective beginning of comparative religion are currently scattered under the label of "religious
dialog" and generally come from religions that define themselves as monotheistic because of
their worldwide extension. The whole for an apologetic or missionary purpose, of course.
Hence problems.We also find useful reflections in circles more or less coming under atheism
but they are
-either detailed but focused on a particular religion.
-or being more general but rather basic.
And, moreover, they also are most often found in the history of religions, but all in a non-religious
perspective.Great names punctuate this story from William Robertson Smith (religion of the
Semites) to Mircea Eliade through Emile Durkheim.Other authors have opened many insights
in this field.Our idea is TO LENGTHEN A CERTAIN NUMBER OF THEM BY GOING FURTHER
IN THIS COMPARATIVE RELIGION (widening of the field of anthropological research,
deepening of the psychological foundations, end of the overvaluation, decolonization,
antiracism, new hypotheses ....) AND BY RESUMING THE INTERRUPTED THREAD OF
THEIR FASCINATING QUEST FOR THE GRAIL BECAUSE ancient druidism is a little like the
famous story of the grail of Perceval and Gawain.It is an unfinished story, which stops abruptly
after the first 9000 lines of verse. Our project is to write the rest of it. A continuation it was said
at the time.These small notebooks intended for future high-knowers, want to be both an
imitation (a pastiche) and a parody. An imitation because they were composed in the manner
of theologians (Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, etc.) at least in what they had, all, of better
(elements in fact often of pagan origin). One of the functions of the imitation was always, indeed,
in the popular oral literature, to answer the expectation of audiences, frustrated by the break of
the original creation [in this case the druidic philosophy]. To this expectation, in the Middle Ages,
the cyclic narrative technique of the epics singing the heroic deeds, or of the Romances of the
Round Table, has responded.The way of the pastiche is the one which consists in enriching the
original by supplementing it with successive touches, by developing just outlined details, or by
interpreting its shadows. And this, the thought of our ancestors needed well!But the reasoned
compilation, due to the hand of Peter DeLaCrau, also is in a way a parody, because it was
never a question, nevertheless, for the project supervisor of this collective work, of supporting
such as it was and unconditionally, the whole of these doctrines.He wished on the contrary, by
all sorts of literary means (reversal of arguments, opposing views, etc.) to bring out their often
negative, harmful, alienating or obscurantist, aspects; and if this text can sometimes seem, to
pay indirect homage to the capacity of reflection of the various current theological Schools,
Christian, Muslim, Jewish or other, it is involuntary; because his purpose is well, to do
everything, in order to wrest from their hands, the monopoly of discourses on the divinity (see
on this subject the remarks of Albert Bayet), even if it means finishing discredit them definitively
in the public eyes.Except as regards the best ideas they have borrowed from paganism, of
course, and which are enormous; because in this last case, it is, let us remember it once again,
from the prospect supervisor of this compilation, a readjustment to our world, of the thoughts of
these theologians' apprentices ((the god of philosophers, the Ahura Mazda, the immortality of
souls, the god-men, the sons of a god, the messiah Saoshyant, the Trinity, the tawaf, the
sacrifices, the life after death, not to mention cherubim paradise, etc.).In other words, not history,
but historical fictions, according to the works of...see the bibliography at the end. In accordance
with this, our "imitation is only a return to our roots. In short a homage."Druidism" is an
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independent review (independent of any religious or political association) and which has only
one purpose: theoretical or fundamental research about what is neo-paganism. For, as Carl
Gustav Jung saw it very well, religion is only "the attentive observation of forces held to be
'powers': spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, and “the careful consideration and observation of
certain dynamic factors, understood to be “powers,spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals
or whatever name man has given to such factors as he has found in his world powerful,
dangerous or helpful enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful and
meaningful enough to be devoutly adored and loved(Psychology and Religion 1937).
The double question, to which this review of theoretical studies tries to answer, could be
summarized as follows:"What could be or what should be a current neo-druidism, modern and
contemporary?”"Druidism" is a neo-pagan review, strictly neo-pagan, and heir to all genuine
(that is to say non-Christian) movements which have succeeded one another for 2000 years,
the indirect heir, but the heir, nevertheless!Regarding our reference tradition or our intellectual
connection, let us underline that if the "poets" of Domnall mac Muirchertach Ua Néill still had
imbas forosnai, teimn laegda and dichetal do chennaib, in their repertory (cf. the conclusion of
the tale of the plunder of the castle of Maelmilscothach, of Urard Mac Coise, a poet who died
in the 11th century)*, they may have been Christians for several generations. It is true that
these practices (imbas forosnai, teimn ...) were formally forbidden by the Church, but who
knows, there may have been accommodations similar to those of astrologers or alchemists in
the Middle Ages.Anyway our "Druidism" is also a will; the will to get closer, at the maximum,
to ancient druidism, such as it was (scientifically speaking). The will also to modernize this
druidism, a total return to ancient druidism being excluded (it would be anyway
impossible).Examples of modernization of this pagan druidism.
Giving up to lay associations of the cultural side (medicine, poetry, mathematics, etc.).
Principle of separation of Church and State.
Specialization on the contrary, in Celtic, or pagan in general, spirituality history of religion,
philosophy and metapsychics (known today as parapsychology).
Use in some cases of the current vocabulary (Church, religion, baptism, and so on).A
golden mean, of course, is to be found between a total return to ancient druidism
(fundamentalism) and a too revolutionary radical modernization (no longer sagum).
The Celtic PAA (pantheistic agnostic atheist) having agreed to sign jointly this small library *,
of which he is only the collector, Druid Hesunertus (Peter DeLaCrau), does not consider
himself as the author of this collective work. But as the spokesperson for the team which
composed it. For other sources of this essay on druidism, see the thanks in the bibliography.
* This little camminus is nevertheless important for young people ... from 7 to 77 years old!
Mantalon siron esi.
NAME
FIRST NAME
ADDRESS
ZIP CODE
CITY
TAKES OUT A SUBSCRIPTION TO THE MAGAZINE “DRUIDISM.”
Payment by check payable to Peter DeLaCrau.
Correspondence is to be sent to: DRUIDISM c/o Peter DeLaCrau.
* Do ratath tra do Mael Milscothach iartain cech ni dobrethaigsid suide sin etir ecnaide 7 fileda
7 brithemna la taeb ogaisic a crech 7 is amlaidsin ro ordaigset do tabairt a cach ollamain ina
einech 7 ina sa[ru]gad acht cotissad de imus forosnad [di]chetal do chollaib cend 7 tenm laida .i.
comenclainn fri rig Temrach do acht co ti de intreide sin FINIT.
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INTRODUCTION:
REMINDER OF THE ANCIENT HINDU IDEAS
ON THE SUBJECT.
The basic idea of Jainism, religion resulting from Hindu religion in the sixth century, is thus
expressed by Asharya Jinasena in his Mahapurana: “Some foolish men declare that God
made the world but the doctrine that the world was created is ill-advised, and should be
rejected. If God created the world, where was he before creation? Where is he now?No single
being had the power to make the world - for how could an immaterial god create that which is
material? How could God have made the world without any raw material? If you say he made
this raw material first, and then the world, you are just pushing back the problem…... If God
created the world by a pure act of will, without any raw material, then it is just his will made
nothing else and who will believe this silly stuff?If God is perfect, and complete, why could the
will to create the world have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no
more create the universe than a potter could. If he is formless, motionless, and all-embracing,
how could he have created the world? Such a spirit, devoid of all modality, would have no
desire to create anything. If you say that he created to no purpose, because it was his nature
to do so then God is pointless.If he created in some kind of challenge, it was the challenge of
a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created out of love for living things and need of them;
why did he not make creation wholly free from misfortune? The doctrine that the world was
created by God makes no sense at all .
In other words, Asharya Jinasena underlines the childish anthropomorphism of the Judaeo-
Islamic-Christian creationism.Editor's note. Aryan here is to take the strict sense of peopling
from Iran to northern India. Whatever the exact figure of the victims, six million being a
symbolic figure, the sinister reality having to range between five and six million; the very
existence of the Shoah by bullets and of the extermination (by work) camps has forever
disgraced the cosmic symbol of the gammadion. It is a forever indelible stain on any idea of
German National Socialism, these mass murders having even revived the belief in the
existence of the devil and of hell on earth. Speaking of Jainism it is better to say swastika
(triskelion or small sun wheel among the Celts) rather than gammadion (German
hakenkreuz).
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REMINDER ABOUT FORMER DRUIDISM.
SAINT HIPPOLYTUS OF ROME. BOOK I, chapter XX: Philosophumena.
The Celts esteem these as prophets and seers, on account of their foretelling to them
certain (events), from calculations and numbers by the Pythagorean art; on the methods of
which very art also we shall not keep silence, since also from these some have presumed to
introduce Schools of thought [hairesis or heresy in Greek].”
What the most famous of the popes having spoken about druidism reports to us there is
extremely clear. The former druidism was therefore, at a certain time, it seems, divided into
several different metaphysical Schools.Probably the three below.The spiritualistic monistic
School, the materialistic monistic School, and finally the School situated between these two
extremes.The first of these Schools taught that the Universe is first composed of a soul
symbolically considered as being some fire. For it, the matter was simply a form of being or of
feeling of the soul.Arrived at this point of our talk it becomes necessary to somewhat give it
also the floor . For these high knowers, the only true world therefore was that of the god-or-
demons, that of the Sedodumnon, the matter is only a disappointing world, the matter being
only a non-world (an-dumnon).For the second of the hypotheses, on the other hand, the
almost materialistic monistic School, the soul was only the matter becoming aware of itself, in
a way a dream of the matter.And there was also, of course, a tendency, granting as much
importance to both, and consequently putting these two components of the Universe on an
equal footing. At the beginning were fire and water, we have said. Perhaps through fire it is
necessary to understand the soul or the spirit, and with water, the matter.
I BIRTH OF OUR WORLD ACCORDING TO THIS SCHOOL OF THE HIGH-KNOWERS OF
ANTIQUITY.
In the druidic religious thought, the “Big Bang” is regarded only as the explosive insertion of
the Time and of its measure into an already existing raw material, in an ultra-concentrated
stage.As a long time as the Time is not controlled, i.e., completely extracted from the matter
and from the soul, eternal, the whole of the universe continues to evolve towards still more
organization and awareness.This approach of the phenomenon which is the birth of our
universe has some parallels in all the Indo-European world.
The fossil urchin called snake egg by Pliny is an important symbol in this respect. To what it
refers is obvious finally: the theory of the primitive atom that will be rediscovered later by the
Canon George Lemaître in 1927 in Brussels. It is the theory of the initial explosion, which
supposes besides that the Bitos or Universe will be retracted one day after a period of
expansion, and that all will begin again through another “explosion" of the initial cell.The egg
of snake is, in a way, the shell of the golden embryo, original germ of the soul, and this egg
floats in the primary space brooded by the cosmic snakes. The cosmic egg is the shape taken
by the being of beings, which exists before the world itself, beyond its formation and
destruction.The cosmic egg brooded by the snakes will separate in two and thus will give birth
to the soul on the one hand (fire) and to the matter on the other hand (water: matrix, matrona,
matra etc.). Like a hand which collects, at the end of the process, what the other launched,
these druidic snakes symbolize the emanation of the initial indifference from where everything
comes and into what everything goes back to be regenerated.Water and fire are forming
only a “materia prima,” a primary substance, which is that of the snakes. Spirits of primary
water, they are also fire spirits.The circular form of this allegory from the prehistoric high-
knowers gave place to another interpretation: the union of the chthonic world, illustrated by
the snakes, and of the celestial or spiritual world illustrated by the circle. But in fact, they are
the snakes themselves, which symbolize the union of the two opposite principles: the matter
and the soul or spirit.This interpretation is confirmed by the fact that the snake, in certain
representations of the cosmic egg, is half black and half white (an encircled S).
Coviocantos/Covocantos, interpenetration, fulness and vacuity. A symbol which one finds as
far as the Far East, because it was also an Aryan and Scythian symbol at the beginning. It
was therefore also used by Buddhism.The cosmic snake is a snake only before and after the
whole space-time continuum, where neither god-or-demons nor men have access. The
prehistoric high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) called the Universe, “Bitus“ which
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means Life, but with a connotation of duration.That shows us well that the high knowers in the
Antiquity had understood that the Universe or Bitus is imperishable in its basic constituent
parts, although being able to end as shaped body.A sculptor or a goldsmith can very well
successively give all possible and imaginable forms to a gold heap. But whatever these
shapes are, the fact remains that the substance of the parts of this mass will always remain
immutable, it will always be gold.
II THE IMAGE OF THE FLOATING SHIELD.
Water is the matrix, the seedbed and the mother from which all things come. Anything is
made of water but behind the idea of water they understood some wet, which emanates from
it in the form of a substance filled with solar fire” (according to Henry Lizeray: Secret
doctrines).
Hence again the symbolism of the island of Murias in the Irish tradition, whose name comes
from the Celtic mori meaning sea: it is from it that the abundance cauldron of the Suqellus
Dagda Gurgunt comes.Come at this point of our talk, let us remind before going further that
the high knowers of Antiquity were perhaps among the first to think that the earth was not flat
but more or less round. Of that we have at least three clues.Saint Virgil or Fergal, abbot of
Aghadoe in Ireland then bishop of Salzburg in Austria, advocated this thesis and had even
some contentions with saint Boniface who reproached him for having affirmed that there were
inhabited stars. An idea that the Greeks had never had apparently.The title even of the work
of the Irish monk of Luxeuil called Dicuil, in Latin De mensura orbis terrae.The existence in
Gaelic language of a very old word in connection with the concept of sphere, to indicate the
Earth: cruinne (old Celtic crundnios). And this although at the time, after the return to
obscurantism caused by the Barbarian Invasions, everyone or almost thought that the Earth
was flat.One of the images most usually used by the ancient high-knowers was nevertheless
that of the shield. The Earth was like a round, strongly convex, shield (we find again, here, the
notion of crundnios/cruinne), floating on water. Some water surrounding the disc of the Earth
made of nine different zones (9 waves) of which three of them had enough different
characteristics (finally at least according to them) to have a proper name: Wave of North, etc.
the association of the Ocean so designed and of a rather extraordinary shield is a pattern
which we will find therefore in very many legends. When the Hesus Cuchulain hits with his
sword, the shield which is his for example, the first three waves also rise to respond to him.
The disc of the Earth or, more exactly, of the Land of the Middle (Mediomagos) in the shape
of a round shield floating on water* was topped with the heavenly vault (the whole having an
overall spherical or ovoid form: a gigantic cosmic egg in a way).
* And after this evocation of the image of the Earth compared with a round shield floating on
water, perhaps it is not useless to remind that the motto of the manufacturers of Parisian
boats (boatmen) in the first century was (in Latin) “fluctuat nec mergitur”: it is tossed by the
waves, but does not sink. An allusion to the stability of the Earth???
III THE RAMHEADED SNAKE (WHICH SURROUNDS THE EARTH WITH HIS RINGS)
AND LIVES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEANS.
The invisible gigantic ram-headed snake which encircles the globe with his rings, a little like a
caduceus; is an allegory representing or symbolizing the telluric forces and energies which
runs through the Earth and liven up all that moves on its surface (reproductive instinct, instinct
of self-preservation, hunger, aggressiveness, attraction/repulsion, etc.).Considering the
difficulties to represent such a situation (even the Mercator projection leads to distortions) the
practice to bring back this spherical symbolism of the snake’s egg to a plane surface,
persisted.Related to a plane surface as in the case of the Mercator projection and with the
same inevitable conceptual distortions indeed, this allegory could therefore be stated as
follows.
The ram-headed snake is the image of a cosmographical and geographical great
principle.Older than the god-or-demons themselves, he sleeps at the bottom of the oceans,
and is the great terror of the soul/minds mislaid in these places far in the west of the world.
You will be as gods if you succeed in crossing this ultimate barrier, the ram-headed snake
always seems to say, to the soul/minds wandering in these crossing points, in search of
another world. He causes the tides when he drinks, the storms when he shakes himself. In
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short, it is the Ocean itself of which nine waves or whorls surround the convex disc of the
Earth.
The Welsh tradition has an equivalent of this ram-headed snake responsible for the storms:
the Abancos (the aquatic one). Welsh Afang. It is the object of one of the exploits of the hero
Hu Gadarn (Su Catarnos) such saint Georges knocking down the dragon.Spirit or symbol of
primary water, the ram-headed snake is also the symbol of all the waters, whether they are
those of the lower part, those which run on the surface of the land, or those from above.In a
sense, it is also the Father Rhine (Ater Renos) or the deua Sequana (the River Seine). With,
in addition, the powers of the ram.
IV REMINDER ON THE SYMBOLISM OF THE ANGUIPEDICS AND OF THE WYVERNS.
Space-time-matter. The movement tending to establish harmony (dynamic and not static) is
always born, at the beginning, from the disorder and chaos. Primitive chaos in the druidism is
then represented by these dark and distorted (anguipedic) giants, first-born sons of the land
and of the water.In the Antiquity the non-world of the anguipedic wyverns was the symbol or
the reflection of this chaos, the symbol or the reflection of the time when the natural order had
not been imposed over the elements in the world.The battles of the Plain of the standing
stones or mounds (symbolization of the genesis of our world) will be needed so that the god-
or-demons and the men manage gradually, and successively, to control this non-world.
Thanks to the exploits of Lug the one equally skilled in many arts (samildanach) and thanks to
the pieces of advice of Barinthus Lerogenos (Manannan among the Gaels).But the god-or-
demons, like any human being practicing art, do not draw their work ex nihilo. They are not
creators, but only transformers. With them the beings and the things become, but are not
really created.The “Romano-British or Gallo-Roman” wyverns or anguipedics (voberoi)
embodying original chaos, correspond to the Irish Fomore (vomorioi). Man called them also
Andernas on the Continent.A carved stone of Meigle in Perthshire (slab 22 of the local
museum) represents one of them , a kind of triton or male siren (merman) holding his coils of
hair, cross-legged with her entwined legs terminating both in fishtails.Considering what can
seem to be horns, some neo-druids of today compared him (wrongly because it is only the
beginning of his hair) with the Gaulish god Hornunnos. This mysterious creature is flanked by
two animals difficult to identify (a bear and a dog?) but with prominent claws. These non-
human entities are called Andernas in Central Europe. See also for example the Jupiter
mounted on a horse and triumphing over an anguipedic giant.N.B. These Jupiter columns are
monumental structures found mainly on a territory from Rhineland to Great Britain. They are
topped with a heavenly horseman rearing over, riding down or being supported by a man-like
monster whose legs are in the form of a snake.This mythical topic was, of course, taken over
by the first Christians, particularly in the hagiography of St Columba of Iona (he banishes the
monster of the Loch Ness) or St Patrick driving out the snakes from Ireland ( there was never
snakes on this island blessed by the gods) even St Honoratus driving out the snakes from
Lerins Island on the French Riviera (St Patrick would have allegedly remained there, but it is
a lie more to attribute to our Christian friends).In Great Britain we also have the low relief
found at Stragglethorpe in Lincolnshire. That representing a rider triumphing over a snake
taken between the feet of his horse, not that one representing St Mickael defeating the
dragon).The druidomaniacs of the 19th century connected this word with a Celtic name
meaning sea or nightmare. In fact, it is preferable to consider the vocalized m or mh as an
Irish variant of a - b or bh stem, unattested, but which is matched by the common Celtic *vo-
bera, in which we find the name of the continental wyvern.
V MEANING OF DRUIDIC TOTEMISM.
By definition the totemism is a belief which admits the existence of animal ancestors of which
an individual or a social group is supposed to come from. This belief appears religiously
through worshiping the animal ancestor, and also through various prohibitions, particularly
concerning the food.You cannot eat meat from the animal totem, except as the ethnologists
pointed it out, during the ritual celebrations, when the transgression of the “taboo“ is allowed,
if not obligatory.The reality of the totemism is complex insofar as some coded or transmitted
by meaningful pictures, traditions, intervene. It is especially necessary to avoid falling into the
trap consisting in regarding the “primitive ones” as mentally underdeveloped. The word
“primitive” would be used besides only to indicate the chronological precedence. In this
sense, totemism therefore is to be reduced to its right dimensions.
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In the 19th century, when the influence of the Golden Bough of James George Frazer was
dominant, the tendency was to the rejection of the presence of totemic elements in druidic
religion.But this rejection does not seem justified. If it is certain that there are names of men
made up with animal names, for the symbolic value that the aforementioned animals confer to
them; there are also elements which can hardly be explained if not through some totemism.
The ritual techniques used by the high knowers of the druidecht come from very old traditions,
but which are not necessarily an Indo-European heritage. The Celts had to come to a
compromise with the indigenous peoples of Western Europe, when they came to settle there.
It is therefore impossible not to discover prehistoric survivals in druidism.It is for example
more than probable as for the deity having the name Hornunnos. It is also possible with
regard to the role of animals - but also of plants - in mythology, at least in the accounts in
which intervene frequently some beings endowed with animal shapes or having animal
names. The relation of Vindos/Finn Mac Cumail, of his family and of the Fenians, in Ireland,
with the Cervidae, is the evidence of that: it is probably a former clan, heir to the prehistoric
occupants of Ireland. Vindos (Finn in Gaelic language), whose true name was Damonios
(Demne in Gaelic language), could not kill deer, his son Uxsoinos (Ossian in Gaelic) could not
kill fawn. A part of Leinster besides has the Irish name Osraige (Uxsorigion) what means
nearly stag kingdom.Let us not forget also that St Patrick himself was a specialist of the
changes into a stag (or into deer). The symbolism of the stag in the Celtic world is therefore
very vast, and it relates, of course, to the primary states.Let us not forget finally, and as we
saw, that the race who, according to the Book of Conquest, settled the first in the Island, was
the race of Nemet-os. Therefore the name means, of course, “the sacred one,” but whose
nation was also a people of stags since, to mingle with them, Tunos Carilligenos [Tuan Mac
Cairill] was precisely compelled to change himself… into a stag! It was generally believed , at
the time, that the stag lived longer than the man. Tuan Mac Cairill is the very picture of the
primordial Man, still able to re-create, as Mircea Eliade says about the shaman, the golden
age of the beginnings of mankind; when the men and the animals spoke the same language
and understood themselves (see in the Bible the episode of the she-donkey of
Balaam).Admittedly, the changes of Tuan are symbolic, adapted to the civilization which is its
background, but they show this realization well that the human being is not isolated in the
universe; and that he belongs to a unit gathering all the elements and all the energies: the
Bitus.
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ANTHROPOLOGY.
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VI TOTEMISM AND PRIMORDIAL MAN.
According to this example (of Tuan, but also of Donnos/Donn or Monganos/Mongan), the
belief in the possibility of changes into a stag was a current thing at the time; and man did not
imagine yet an insuperable cut between the divine, human, or animal, worlds.And there are
also not very clear stories in connection with the existing link between human and animal.
For example, that of Kulhwch who is born within a herd of swine.
It is no longer a simple symbolism, here, but something much stronger (an allusion to the
mysterious race of Banuta/Banva/Banba?)It should be reminded about this subject that, even
after the establishment of Christianity, people continued to make processions in which masks
of stags were worn. The clerics did not cease vituperating this ritual called “cervulum (or
cervula) facere,” what seems to indicate that they saw in them, not a simple popular
entertainment, but something much deeper. Caesarius of Arles goes so far as to condemn
this habit as sordidissimam turpitudinem.More precise still, saint Hilary, about a rite
celebrated in full sixth century; in January, in the Gevaudan (French department of Lozere),
declares: “praefixo quidem cervi capite ad imitandum fera formam conditionem humanam
persuasionis diabolicae scelus inclinat “. “I curse whoever is inclined to the crime due to
diabolic persuasion consisting of wearing a stag's head to imitate the animals, as a symbol of
the human status".In the eighth century still, St Pirmin prohibited “in cervulos et veculas (Latin
vitulas) in Kalendas vel aliud tempus nolite ambulare“. “Going [disguised] in stags and calves
during the changes of the month or on any other occasion”.The symbolism of the stag refers
to the symbolism of the beginnings of life, and particularly of the beginnings of mankind. In
many totemic traditions, the stag is presented as being the ancestor of the men (see the
famous cave of the Three Brothers: its prehistoric shaman wizard wears stag antlers there).
The totemic idea of the stag ancestor of men is found a little everywhere in the Celtic
traditions as we could see.The true name of Vindos (Finn) is Damonios (Demne), i.e., deer.
His son is Uxsoinos (Ossian), the fawn, the mother of this one being a woman changed into a
hind by a magician, his grandson is Uxsocaros (Oscar), i.e., the one who loves stags. Morholt
in Ireland, uncle of Iseult, killed by Tristan, is described lying sewn in a stag skin. The stag
therefore seems to have played a psychopomp part.It is impossible to better express
therefore this totemic idea of always, since we also find it among the Indians of North
America, namely that Man comes from Stag.In other traditions, this value will have all its
cosmic and spiritual extent. The stag will seem thus as the intermediary between the heaven
and the earth, as the symbol of the rising sun which goes up towards its zenith.The animals
are woken up.They leave the shelters where they slept.The stag leads them boldly.He comes
from the undergrowth where he lives,guiding his young, towards daylight.Our hearts are
merry.The stag is the herald of the light,he guides towards daylight.
It is through completely similar myths that Celtic metaphysical imagination too has configured
in accessible symbols the metahistory of human origins.
In iconography, Hornunnos is constantly combined with the ram-headed snake.There either it
is not by chance. The Celtic Tradition, to translate this undeniable reality that is the power of
human conscience, indeed used the image of the apple (or also of the acorn, outgoing of the
purse of Hornunnos) fruit of knowledge; but also that of the ram-headed snake, guardian of
the gates of the Other World, which surrounded by its nine waves the aforementioned
country, because the land conquered by the Nemetos/Hornunnos and his people was a true
“plain with apple trees” (aballomagos). Among Celts, the apple tree (aballos) was also a
meta-historical and legendary tree, the Bilios, hence the name of Hyperborea, therefore, in
some texts: Biliomagos (the ultima Thule of Pytheas) is one of the torn off fragments of
Hyperborea which will remain for a long time after its partial sinking.
The first “man” having eaten this fruit of knowledge in this “Hyperborea” (of this apple) was
therefore the Nemetos Hornunnos. Future men and God-or-demons having thus eaten
apples, fruits of the knowledge of the good and evil; they will also add, to their merely animal
sufferings, as we will further see, another pain, from a purely divine origin, the metaphysical
suffering this time. And thus the animal became man, well before there are God-or-demons.
This metaphysical anxiety will be the first sign of a broken world, the sign of our humanity.
While eating of this knowledge fruit of the other world , the first men or the future god-or-
demons in Hyperborea, became aware of their separation from their destiny.They realized
that the divine one and their soul /spirit did not form any more one being but two different
entities, distinct, that they were exiled far, very far from their destiny. A status marked by
11
death. The human, or divine, being, will thus be referred as soon as the beginning, to the
constituent limits of any living being here below.
You are earth, resulting from the depths, and therefore you will return to earth one day,” will
be even possible to say one day about the men (gdonioi > donioi =, in other words, the
chthonic ones).
The primordial Man, father of all the men, and also of the god-or-demons (because men and
God-or-demons are brothers) is therefore the Nemed/Hornunnos as we saw. The
Nemed/Hornunnos is, of course, in the image of the deity but only by his soul/mind or by what
results from it. “Conscience, reason, freedom, responsibility, autonomy, all privileges of the
soul/mind, but of a soul/mind embodied, therefore only in the image of the deity and not
essentially identical to the deity.”This Primordial Man, resulting from animality (wild boar or
stag, etc.) is still earthly.The fact that this Nemetos is resulting from the animality, as the Irish
version imagines a little awkwardly, has therefore serious consequences for his descent, in
other words, for Mankind, even for subordinate anthropomorphic God-or-demons. This
original weakness staged by the famous account of the nine days’ fever of the Ulaid or
Voluntii (Ces noinden Ulad) is responsible for all the perversions of the spirit which could be in
History. There exist beings called men but who wallow in a material world diverted from the
divinity, feel no immanent or transcendent anguish, doesn’t give a damn about their soul or of
their spirit. Such beings are not worthy to be called Men. They are only psychic ones, ignorant
and refusing what belongs to the soul/mind, having no nostalgia of Hyperborean times. Each
one of them is satisfied with the post-Hyperborean world in which we live, without being
concerned with eternal life, without any spiritual research, any search for the world of the god-
or-demons. The nostalgia of the superhuman time of Hyperborea does not haunt them.Such
men are not men in a strict sense of the word; they are only animals of a higher type (from the
symbolic point of view). Some children of the Nemetos/Hornunnos, victims of the original
weakness: animality.
The first of a lineage historically speaking is always the cause of what will stem from him later.
This is why Hornunnos is also and especially (from now on) the god-or-demon of the dead,
the god-or-demon of death.Hornunnos thus seems the great responsible one of the human or
divine chain which will result from him. It is the first illustration of this original weakness which
has so many consequences on our poor mankind, which in a sense also explains the
evolution of certain gods in demons in legends.As a result the Nemetos/Hornunnos is also
sometimes the mythological symbol of the Earth, because in this Nemetos/Hornunnos and in
his spiritual heirs, the telluric elements and the celestial elements act together. The telluric
elements prevail in the Man, the celestial elements in the Toutai Devas (God-or-
demons).Primordial is somewhat equivalent, in the case of Nemetos/Hornunnos, to initial,
because this primacy in question is of a natural and ontological nature.It is about the first
stage in the ascending evolution which leads to the divinity. It is, of course, a priority in the
chronological order, but also in the order of the Evolution. The Man was previous to his god-
or- demons ; he made them in his image, but, in what concerns him, the animal, whether he is
salmon, swine or stag, is never very far.
In Ireland during the Middle Ages, people divided in two even into three
Nemetos/Hornunnos.As it is very well said by the great celtologist Christian Joseph
Guyonvarc'h in connection with the legends of this country: “None of these leaders or dynasty
head is a primordial man. It was therefore necessary to have one, or two, or three, of them,
who transcended all, in order to transmit to the future and distant generations the memory, or
better, the detailed account, of the fundamental events. The Irishmen expected from the
primordial man a major service: the transmission of the traditional knowledge justifying their
name and their existence throughout the events of History, until and including through the
change of religion. But for such a task, difficult and having serious consequences, several
competences were not superfluous. Therefore they split up the expression of the
Primordiality in a plurality of individuals.”
12
VII THE SECOND BATTLE OF THE PLAIN OF THE STANDING STONES OR OF THE
MOUNDS (ITS SYMBOLISM).
Mag Tured (Moytirra for the English-speaking people). This place name represents a rather
late stage of Goidelic or Q Celtic: that in which, instead of names made up in the German or
Greek manner, the substantive is placed before the qualifier like in French. Through
etymological regression it gives us Magos Turation. Magos = plain, Tura = mound or tumuli in
the nominative singular, Turate = mounds or tumuli in the nominative plural. Turation being
the genitive plural of Tura = mound, a tumulus, Mag Tured therefore means “mounds plain “.
Or “tumuli plain.”In the world of relativities which is that of the current life, the matter would be
equivalent to chaos if we let it remain in an anarchistic way. It is what this myth of the wyverns
and of the anguipedics expresses according to many authors. When Lug kills his grandfather
Balor, he affirms the prevalence of the spirit over the raw and natural matter. Lug organizes
the matter of which he is the grandson, affirming thus he is one in his duality. Lug, the
Promethean god-or-demon, killed his grandfather Balor, the chthonic god-or-demon whose
single eye symbolizes clairvoyance, but he destroyed thereby, the knowledge of the profound
truths.According to these authors, the characteristic of this battle it is that Bregsos/Bres, very
embodiment of the earth power, remained necessary to the fertility of animals and fields, and
that he was spared. Every victory of the forces of light over the forces of darkness can only be
relative, without that, there would be no life.The fighting will be so hard that the god-or-
demons will undergo heavy losses and will leave weakened. So they will not continue for a
very long time to rule this earth. It is impossible by definition that everything is light in this
world. New invaders will therefore appear to occupy the earth; they will be the descendants of
Hornunnos the Stag- Man, our distant ancestors, the hunter gatherers.
VIII THE BATTLE FOR TALANTIO [ROSEMARTHA ON THE CONTINENT] OR THE
HUSBANDRY.
Notes in connection with the Fir Dumnain Gauls < Viroi Dumnonioi symbolizing the first really
human race having occupied the land, and whose name literally means “Men of the Depths of
Earth, men of this world" precisely (vir + dumnon).The name Gaileoin is to be compared to
that of Galatai or Gauls, also Brittonic. As for Fir Bolg (Men with a bag, vir + bolg), specialists
agree to see there another Brittonic people, the Belgians.It was to be there an invasion of
Belgians accompanied by Gauls and Domnoni in a time we could not date with
certainty.These new occupiers are farmers and are members of the civilization of the Iron
Age, probably that which is known as “Hallstatt.” They introduce the use of this metal for the
manufacture of spears and the institution of a monarchy linked to the fertility of the land.The
end of the ordering Cosmos can only be the final result of the conflict between the divine
generations (Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd, Lugos, Belenos Barinthus known as Manannan
Mac Lir in Gaelic language); and of the triumph of the heavenly god-or-demons over the
wyverns or over the anguipedics (under-gods). But also, to conclude, of the victory of the men
over the god-or-demons, at least in this world which is theirs.God-or-demons and men had
confronted one another, but the latter were victorious, especially because of their
stubbornness bordering on the bad faith besides. The men drive out the luminous deities from
the surface of the earth and force them to take refuge a little everywhere, including in the
mounds and in the megalithic monuments. Such is the paradox. The mainly telluric humans
enjoy freedom of the air and great clearness of the day, while some of the god-or-demons,
however, mainly aerial, and therefore of luminous nature, are locked up in darkness. What a
symbol! It is true that it is the human spirit which rejected the divine lights in underground
depths. It is true also that if the living cannot, of their own will, to venture in these unconscious
depths, the people of the Sidhe themselves, on the other hand, can haunt the surface of the
Earth. But the fact remains that our very existence is based on a paradoxical and irrational
situation. That is the case because that is to be the case.If the brightness of the divine lighting
were not subdued for us, its contemplation would be as perilous for us as the meeting of the
single eye of Balor: it would destroy us at once.
13
IX SYMBOLISM OF HYPERBOREA.
Therefore hesitating between the celestial spheres of the Vindobitus or of the Albiobitus (what
saint Irenaeus calls the Pleroma) and the Talantio, the land cultivated in the ordinary sense of
the word (another personification: the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is preferred,
Rosemartha), Hyperborea could therefore only be the field of ambivalence and randomness.
The field of the tearing of being, between its spiritual source and its tendency to nothingness.
The energies which will liven it up will be able to be easily turned, to become dark and
harmful, hence as we will see it, the general fall of the men and of the god-or-demons, at least
of some of them, in the depths. The Dumnon, it is precisely the World as an abyss (depth).
It is impossible to separate clearly the islands north of the World from the Other World and
from the routes, all maritime, which lead to this place or to this state of being. The islands of
the primordial high knowers in the clan of the Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, in the whole
expression moderation or doctrinal simplicity of the beginning of the Maighe Tuireadh battle
account, are not different, in their deep nature, of the islands described by the immrama later.
And it is not more possible to separate from the latter the paradisiacal islands of the Blessed
that the Greeks visited among the Hyperboreans. It is the Irish sidhe in the whole meaning of
the term. This mythical Hyperborea was for them in any case, a true Garden of Eden. The two
following descriptions show it.
Your island is good.
Its honey, its harvest and its corn,
Its fish and its grain,
Are abundant.
Heat and cold are moderate there.
You have all which you need.
The best for you is therefore
To really behave as brothers
And to live on good terms with one another.”
Sea full of fish, fertile Country
Fish abundance
Like powerful sea stream
Flock of birds
Rough sea but…Full of fish sea.
The salmons fall from everywhere
Like a white hail.
There are also great whales.
Fish abundance
And sea full of fish
The men sing in the harbors...“
O noble warriors, be welcome in this land.There is a long time ago that the prophets
predicted your coming.This land will be yours forever.In the west of the world, there shall not
be a better one.In it no race shall be more numerous than yoursThis land is for you.”(The
goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this word is preferred, Eriu.)
X SUPERHUMAN POTENTIALITIES OF MAN.
The man, then, was not satisfied to populate the world of the god-or-demons to which he
ascribed the strangest acts. He believed that, by the magic (sic) man could rise to the level of
the deities fight against them on an equal footing and sometimes overcome them” (d’Arbois
de Jubainville. Mythological Cycle).This interpretation of the original pan-Celtic myth suggests
that it was a time when the men were the (almost equal) brothers of the god-or-demons. But
they misused this divine power( the preternatural powers Christians would say) so much that
Belinos Barinthus Lerognatos (Manannan among the Gaels), the ruler of the god-or-demons,
decided to remove from them this divinity then to hide it in a place where it would be
impossible for them to find it. The challenge was to find for it a good hiding place, a really
effective hiding place.And since this time Donios, the Man, went round the world , explored,
climbed, dived and dug… in search of something… which sleeps in fact in the bottom of
14
himself because Belinos Barinthus Lerognatos (Manannan for the Gaels) actually did
anything of that! He did not remove from the men their divinity (their preternatural powers);
he made only to conceal it from their eyes using the vegtos vidtouos (feth fiada) or Isis's veil.
The god-or-demons are a non-fulfilled possibility of the human being. They are what the men
should be, and their actualization can only be the object of a violent struggle to begin,
according to all these battles (between men and God-or-demons).The gods or demons will
become thus, for all those who will result from the mankind, the single object of their desire or
of their nostalgia, hence besides the pathetic romanticism of all this Celtic literature.To be
unaware of this radical disability of Man, in his own eyes, compared to all his dreams, this
radical human weakness, well staged by the famous Gaelic legend of the nine days' fever of
the Ulaid (or Voluntii), as we have already said, can only give place to very serious mistakes
in the field of the socio-political analysis.The Man must unceasingly fight to become attached
to the beautiful and good one and it is not without an effort that he manages to achieve his
inner unity. The human nature was again a little more weakened by the last Hyperborean
episodes was subjected to the ignorance to the suffering and to the fear of death. These
human weaknesses due to the loss of our preternatural powers, that the story of the disease
of Ulaid marks off precisely (ces noinden Ulad), are transmitted to us, from generation to
generation.But Men remain nevertheless still intended for a higher end, one day (to find their
lost preternatural powers again) because finally all this violence or unconsciousness of
Mankind, will not have negative effects only, after all is said and done.Such madness was, of
course, needed to dare to assume this “Grail” that the god-or-demons will end up refusing, in
a way, once cornered to do that.
XI THE VEIL OF ISIS THE VEIL OF THE GODS (their flight and their exile out of this world).
This existential denial or doubt will somewhat darken the essential substance of the god-or-
demons being, which had been therefore pure incandescence or almost, until then. The god-
or-demons understood that if the men remained with them in Hyperborea, at their sides, they
would never be able to be delivered from their own gray area. This is why they made
themselves, in a way, the demiurges of this world: while giving it up to the men, thus forced to
become the instruments by which all the forms of fallen light will find their salvation. The
drama of this metahistory is, of course, an attempt of explanation of our current mankind. This
rather paradoxical attitude (jealousy?) of the god-or-demons with respect to Man is
undoubtedly also explained by the fact that the god-or-demons cannot really live a long time
in this world too much impure for them. Whereas the Man himself, this compound of a
majority of perishable matter and of a minority of soul/mind, can do it.In other words, while
being lower in the cosmic order, in the middle of the matter, the human being can reach the
knowledge of the principle of the principles, beyond even the divine knowledge.The Celtic
Tradition, to express this reality, used the image of the apple, fruit of knowledge, and of the
ram-headed snake, guardian of the gates of the Other World.(The first “God-man” having
eaten this fruit of knowledge in Hyperborea this apple was therefore the Nemetos
Hornunnos.)As we could see it after the battle for the Talantio known as Rosemartha on the
Continent (the third battle of the Plain with standing stones or mounds in a way), the Toutai
Devas (Tuatha De) on the advice of Belinos Barinthus Lerognatos (Manannan Mac Lir in the
Gaelic tradition) will therefore give up the things of the Earth to the human beings.It is that,
contrary to what the people of the Book (Matthew 6: 31-33, and Luke 12 ; 22-31) rather
strangely besides, and in a somewhat contradictory way, affirm; the concern of the Fate and
of its god-or-demons is no longer, and for a long time, concrete or immediate.The Fate and its
God-or-demons do not take any more care of all, of the great things and of the small
ones.The symbolism of this exile of the god-or-demons out of our world is therefore clear. It is
from now on to the Man himself, once again, let us repeat it, to take care of what he will eat,
or drink, to get dressed or housed.
No human undertaking has a prosperous issue without the interposition of the gods” (Arrian.
On Hunting). Admittedly, but the assistance of the god-or-demons intervenes only as a last
resort. The moral of this druidic allegory of the flight of the god-or-demons is therefore clear:
Gods help those who help themselves.The god-or-demons having fulfilled their earthly
15
mission, they are no longer materially in this world. Their presence became now only a
supersensible presence.
XII END OF HYPERBOREAN TIME AND BEGINNING OF THE REAL HISTORY.
The immediate consequence of this occultation of the divinity,of this veil of Isis and of this
exile of the god-or-demons, is that the harmony with nature also began to be broken, and
became little by little foreign to Man.The harmony, in which the men under the wise
leadership of the Nemet Hornunnos were therefore settled, was also destroyed. Their control
of the spiritual faculties of the soul or of the spirit over the body was mainly broken. The union
of the man and the woman was subjected to larger tensions, and their relationship, from now
on, was marked by covetousness and domination.As long as Man thinks to be the equal one
of the god-or-demons, he succeeds in holding their frightening task. But of course, as soon as
he becomes aware that he is not one of them, he gives up his mission and rejects the divine
burden, in denying its existence or in abandoning it to untouchable dogmatic specialists
(monotheism, and even more precisely monolatry).At the end of this cycle, as in the time of
the battle for the Talantio (cultivated land also personified by the goddess-or-demoness, or
fairy if this word is preferred, Rosemartha) the god-or-demons will again be outstripped by the
men. The men are indeed, as we saw, in a way, superior to the god-or-demons; insofar as
they are confronted with the conditions of the bodily existence, what makes their merits
greater.They can thus reach not only the vision of the “Grail,” but also, beyond this Destiny,
the Whole of the Deity, and the Principle of the principles. Because former high-knowers had
turned “chance” (sic) into a higher god: “I reverence not the voice of the birds… or a son or a
woman OR CHANCE. My druid (sic) is the son of God… etc.” (St Columba of Iona in one of
his loricae).The men immobilized themselves in front of themselves, like dizzy. They refused
the limit (God-or-demons) which was previous to them in the being, because they did not
understand that, if this level of being is limiting their horizon, it also goes beyond. The men
therefore thought to be able to reach the original Principle without this intermediate “limit.”As
these heavenly and divine beings were terrible, bright, their meeting with Man, their half-
brother, could only be violent (see above the allegory of the battle for the Talantio known as
Rosemartha on the Continent).But this fighting was necessary to our change , because the
god-or-demon is the creature in which the change of the visible one into invisible one, is
accomplished.By doing this the men nevertheless initially began by falling lower than
them.History will be the time they need to redeem themselves.Then will come a time when it
is no longer the man, but the god-or-demon who is in him, who will contemplate the earthly
and sublunary world.Meanwhile, the time is in a way some delayed eternity, and this delay
inserts into the light being, which is the Theoretical Man (at least in this metahistory) a part of
shadow which was at the beginning outside of him. But the end of the Hyperborean time will
not put an end to this constant back and forth between the two worlds, the ours here below,
the world of mortals, and the other; many legends will illustrate the subject. Particularly about
the islands north of the World precisely.
16
CONCLUSION.
It is obvious that the science of the high-knowers of the Antiquity was not that which
characterizes our time, and that it had nothing sophisticated (in the sense that it did not use
sophisticated technical means). But it did not have less value that the writers of Antiquity did
not hesitate to recognize. The druids “teach many things” (Pomponius Mela) “discuss and
impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the
extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and
the majesty of the immortal gods“ (Caesar); study “natural philosophy” (Strabo), “sublime
matters” (Ammianus Marcellinus), “calculations and numbers“ (Hippolytus of Rome), “ the
knowledge of nature which the Greeks call physiology” (Cicero). It is by very deep
observations of the natural phenomena, by a constant meditation on the problems arising
from the life and its unfolding; by a realization that the human being depends on all that
surrounds him, and that he can have an effect on his environment; that the high knowers of
the time reached a very high scientific level in the science of nature.The druidic thought was
in harmony with the Indo-European design. Continuity through successive long lives (some
cycles): at the end of a certain period, the world experiences a disastrous end “through both
fire and water“ (cf. Strabo book IV, chapter IV, 4). It was also the Brahmanic Vedic Aryan
theory: the Laws of Manu = Manava dharma shastra goes as far as suggesting a 12.000 year
duration for these “long lives” (for these cycles). But apparently the high knowers of the
Antiquity (druidecht) did not come to a conclusion about the estimate of the duration of the
long lives of the worlds. They juggled nevertheless with orders of magnitude which made the
Jews and the Romans laugh. In the Book of Lismore (fo.151, b 2) we indeed find the following
passage.
Three years for the field (three-field system ?)Three lifetimes of the field for the hound.Three
lifetimes of the hound for the horse.Three lifetimes of the horse for the human being.Three
lifetimes of the human being for the stag.Three lifetimes of the stag for the blackbirdThree
lifetimes of the blackbird for the eagle.Three lifetimes of the eagle for the salmon.Three
lifetimes of the salmon for the yew.Three lifetimes of the yew for the world from its beginning
to its end.”
That our favorite author [[Eleanor Hull, “The Hawk of Achill or the legend of the oldest animals
in the world,” Folklore, Vol. 43, No. 4 (1932): pp. 376–409] comments in this way.
We arrive thus at 59,050 years,i.e., two multiples of three more than the Westminster
calculation, which made 6561 years ; i.e., down to the salmon in the Irish list.”
For the record the Bible and therefore the Judaeo-Islamic-Christianity give only six thousand
years of age to our world.One should not especially confuse this concept with that of the great
year of approximately 26.000 years, even less to fix a date. Indeed, the fixing of the vernal
point by Hipparchus in his time, from a vernal equinox, is only a convention. So that the entry
of the sun in Aries, Pisces or Aquarius, and so on, has nothing to do with the astronomical
phenomena which could bring an end to the world so easily determinable in advance. The
high knowers of the druidecht do not appear to have been “doom watchers” or “millenarians"
in this respect… while thinking of eschatology and of the possible birth of a new world by
regeneration of the old one (cycles = long lives).
These cosmological elements appear to us mainly compatible with the modern scientific
hypotheses and knowledge. On the contrary for example of the erroneous concepts of the
later Christian “scholasticism”; which persisted for a long time, treating with contempt
Copernicus, suing Galileo thanks to the Inquisition (he was forced to retract to save his life)
and torturing or executing Giordano Bruno who had not retracted.
17
REMINDER ABOUT COSMOGONY.
Under this title we will summarize now what our enemy brothers, the scientists, think today
about the birth of the world .We say “brothers” because the scientists too come from ancient
druidism, before the great breakup of the latter into science and religion, faith and reason.The
scientists are, in a way, the today druids. IN THIS PRECISE FIELD AT LEAST.With regard to
the sacred one (the nemet) the Celtic priests are still the druids.And let us not forget also that
as regards science, the hypothesis and the theory always apply only in a temporary way.
While waiting for a better explanation, more general, which in turn will be replaced, in an
infinite process of approaching a truth man will never reach because it is infinitely complex.
Lavoisier’s law states: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed"
(corollary to the law of conservation of matter).Therefore the primary matter could be created
from nothing and, as it cannot have an end; it remains eternal in its constant: mass plus
energy. It follows that it is for us scientifically forbidden to seek an origin for this “primordial"
matter i.e., for the environment (quantum vacuum), where the matter was not born yet, but in
which some particles of positron type, electron type, or antimatter, circulate.These particles
being only virtual they are always unstable and therefore do not deserve to be called yet
“matter” in a strict sense of the word.
Questions.
A) Why matter does exist?Answer of the modern High-Scientists: we don’t know, and we
take only note of its existence.
B) Why matter does change unceasingly?Answer of the modern High-Scientists: we don’t
know and we must therefore admit that any matter is intelligent. i.e., according to the most
current definition given to intelligence, that it is able to adapt, to evolve, even to change, and
therefore to create from the elements it has. If the druidism recognizes being unable to
answer these two questions, the Abrahamic monolatry too is unable to answer a much higher
number of problems. Why God does exist, is he smart? And if he had created matter and
space, how, at what time, with what, where he was and what he did before creating space,
where he stays now, in the space or nearby, etc.? Modern druidism implies only two insoluble
questions. Abrahamic monolatry raises some much more.Moreover, the answers given by
the monolaters often contradict scientific laws. They have, moreover, logic comparable with
that of some judges or of some mass media journalists, because they never hesitate to justify
their belief with completely contradictory sentences, according to the cases.See the incredible
propaganda developed by the French journalists during the war fought against Libya by their
“beloved” president in 2011. N.B. Through propaganda we understand the fact to overlook
some important parts of the problem, to repeat ad infinitum partial, slanted, facts, privileging
the spectacular one or the emotional one in favor of a camp, for example Gaddafi distributes
Viagra by the dozen to his army (of mercenaries); the vandalizing of one of the buildings of
the British embassy in Tripoli whereas the regime of Colonel Gaddafi has, of course, the duty
to protect them. Whereas the very same day he had just lost one of his sons and three of his
grandchildren bombed by NATO! I am not especially a partisan of Gaddafi and I acknowledge
that, on the contrary even, I have a soft spot for the Berber people in Jebel Nefusa, from Nalut
to Gharyan through Yefran, but there I admit that such hypocrisy or cynicism, from NATO,
UN, staggers me. The cynicism of the French Nicolas Sarkozy had to rub off on the British
David Cameron. “They give a dog a bad name and hang him” etc. In any case these two men
will have contributed to much discredit and for a long time in the eyes of many inhabitants of
this planet, and NATO and the West and even UN. The whole, to the detriment of the overall
view, objective, with hindsight. Of the type: the villains but then the real villains against the
nice ones: young people, modern, dynamic, feminist - i.e., in favor of a total equality
between women and men - smart, and so on. In short, rather curiously, precisely just like the
journalists, authors of these reports or of these articles. An analysis therefore Manichean and
simplistic even puerile, just worthy of 10-year-old kids, of the situation. In every case having
as a result unquestionably to mislead Joe Bloggs or the man in the street, what was perhaps
the aim targeted it is true). The more you follow this kind of journalism or mass media, the
less you understand what happens, the less you understand the world which surrounds us,
and on the contrary the more this world becomes different, foreign, like located on another
planet that ours.
18
Well, there is generally a completely comparable propaganda from the mass Jewish Christian
or Muslim, monolatries, with regard to the existence, or not, of God, such as they define him
(creator, good, almighty, and so on…)
All that is explainable proves the existence of their God or Demiurge, but all that is
unexplainable (miracles, mysteries, etc.) also! Too easy!
Our physical space (in a very broad sense of the word) contains all that exists and it is infinite,
because to admit that it is limited would be necessarily to admit also that another space
surrounds it.Hubert Reeves, who is one of these “druids” of the 21st century, wrote himself
besides: “The mathematical models suggest that space is probably infinite.”Like the matter,
that it is in a strict sense or in a broader sense (primary matter of the quantum vacuum) is
eternal, its container too is so. And as it changes unceasingly, space always changes in the
way a room varies if one moves in it the objects that it contains. Everything changes
perpetually.
Like the creations of Man, those of Nature are worked out unceasingly. So we witness for
example in our time,the change of our planet.However, the many observations in the Cosmos
discernible by our necessarily limited means of investigation, but rather great, enable us to
have nevertheless a sufficient image of our universe to mainly satisfy our curiosity like our
reason.The spectral analysis of radiation arriving to us from stars and from the remotest
galaxies, proves to us for example that the matter of the universe is made up with basic
elements identical according to their category; that there exist 92 known natural atoms, that
each star is a sun, etc.
Nb. All that was the account of the positions of the pure materialism and deism. Ancient
Druidism having not been materialist in the narrow sense of the word, nor deist in the Judaeo-
Islamic-Christian sense of the word (monolatry, etc) it had a position constituting a synthesis
in a way of these two extremes. Here it is!The immanent absolute starting point of all is
therefore the infinite, the unlimited in size, which is limited only by the bubble of the curved
space of our universe or bitos.Question: how this primordial matter did to exist? Answer of the
modern “druids”: to give birth to this universe or bitos, the nonbeing had only contracted its
absolute immanent one to withdraw itself partially from its own infinite space. And so, the
nonbeing became the being, the nonbeing became the Universe or Bitos. But this universe is
only a kind of hole in the Nothingness, a hole around which this nothingness twists and turns,
a little in the way of the water around a swirl that it has just created by its own
movement.According to Stephen Hawking, the black holes would be at the origin of
everything. These space’s ogres, while turning at full speed like tornadoes, would be able to
curve the space-time. Consequently the virtual particles close to this vortex bang together and
are stuck, or aggregated. It would be this aggregation of virtual particles which would give rise
to the ordinary particles. To the matter. To the physical universe.When the nonbeing was
divided in two by its initial act of withdrawal in itself, it causes two independent and different
Existing.The first forms the nothingness itself, the space and the vacuum, infinite, eternal.The
second, finite and imperfect, constitutes the Being, the Universe, the World, the Bitos. It is not
eternal since he had one day an absolute beginning, but the primordial matter which
composes it from now on will be immortal and imperishable.As this division of the Non-being
in two is from now on perpetual and will not have an end, we are brought to the conclusion
that the physical universe and the infinite space are from now on both coexistent forever. The
Universe is only one bubble isolated within an empty space, floating within the nothingness. It
is an immense, but finite and limited negative curve nevertheless, equally weighing in all
directions.Question: why this primordial matter does change unceasingly?The answer of the
modern druids: this physical universe being almost spherical and limited or finite, and this
from the origin (at the beginning it was only a cosmic “snake’s egg”) energy exchanges are
performed there in closed circuit. Masses or energies being the same reality, energy never
return to absolute nothingness. It is only transmuted, unceasingly. It is liberated from a form to
pass to another.Nothing is lost, nothing is created, and everything is transformed in the
Universe called Bitos by the high knowers. This universe is therefore one, motionless,
indestructible and imperishable failing to be eternal.It is made up of soul and matter.
Like the Chandogya Upanishad (3:19) of our Indian brothers (the Brahmans) says in a
picturesque way : “At the beginning there was only the nonbeing. It was the Being. It grows
and changed into an egg. It rested then it was split. Two fragments of a shell appeared: one
out of silver, the other out of gold. “ That which was out of gold, it was the Soul, that which
was out of silver, the Matter, the ancient high- knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) could
19
have added.As this first division of the Being into soul and matter is also from now on
perpetual, we are brought to consider that soul and matter are coexistent.The soul and the
matter are modalities one of the other, the soul and the matter are only modalities of the
Being.In our universe or bitos in any case, the material substance is only modified spiritual
substance, or conversely the spiritual substance is only contracted or dilated material
substance. According to John Eccles (Evolution of the brain), the self-awareness too would
run according to the laws of the theoretical physics. Nothing makes it possible to affirm in the
name of Science that it can exist a matter COMPLETELY stripped of the psyche, this one not
being measurable,since being non-observable from outside.We can observe only our own
awareness and note thus that there is a connection between its intensity and the degree of
complexity of our behavior.However, modern physics teaches us that the final elements of the
matter are not inert, that they are endowed with energy and gravitational or repulsive
tendencies.ENERGY + TENDENCY = BEHAVIOR.There is no definable border on the
evolutionary trajectory ranging from the simple to the complex, between supposed matter
completely and arbitrarily lacking in the psyche, and matter known as alive. There exists an
infinitely small in the field of dimensions, masses, measurements of time… Why not in that of
the psychic intensity, since this one can vary?It can seem derisory to logically establish a tiny
psyche in an atomic particle since the difference between the tiny and the zero is quite
negligible!In practice it is true, but on the other hand, that has a great philosophical
importance.Not to admit a drop of initial psyche, inseparable from every particle of matter, it
would be, on the one hand, to put oneself in the incapacity to locate the place where should
appear suddenly, miraculously, the psyche; it would be, on the other hand, to establish a
radical cut between an “inert” matter and the living matter, while so leading to the DUALISM:
matter on a side, soul on the other one.Dualism on which are based the Judaeo-Christian and
Islamic religions.Contrary to dualism, we uns, high- knowers of the 21st century, we are for
the MONISM. Monism neither materialist nor spiritualistic, but both at the same time. A quite
simply naturalist monism. Who enables us to imagine the evolution of the level of awareness
without being forced to have recourse to the miracle starting from a certain level of
organization of the cosmic substance (Bitos), impossible to locate.Truth from which rises, with
a blinding clearness, a fundamental axiom of the druidic thought: “We may compare things
human with divine” (Ausonius).
Death involves life. Birth of the Bitos (of Universe).
What was there before the initial explosion of the cosmic snake’s egg, there are 20 billion
years?As we saw, it is difficult to answer this question. The first to try to answer it in a precise
way, but right, was the Canon Lemaître in 1927.
For many modern astrophysicists, it is a quantum vacuum. i.e., an environment where the
matter was not born yet, but where circulate some particles of positrons , electrons, and
antimatter, type. Only virtual particles, they are consequently unstable.There would have
been a fluctuation of the quantum vacuum, and it is this fluctuation of the quantum vacuum
which would be at the origin of our physical universe.Thus let us pass now to the study itself
of the matter of our universe (the question of the soul or spirit will be approached therefore
only between the lines in this study) and while following the example of our modern druids
with their eyes riveted on their telescopes let us try to go back the course of time.Here how
they see the birth of the World today.
20
NEW DRUIDISM.
Big Bang! This evocative word was used for the first time by a detractor of the theory, Fred
Hoyle, in 1950. Lemaître himself spoke of a primeval atom or cosmic egg. It is generally
associated it with an explosion which would have generated the current physical universe. In
fact, it is a false idea, it is more right to say expansion of the universe. At least this explosion
or expansion of the original cosmic egg is currently the limit beyond which the scientists are
no longer able (and will perhaps never be able) observe, or at least estimate, the state of the
universe. Therefore we do not know the cause of this expansion-explosion nor its why. It is
said to us that the universe is infinite. All right, but what is the infinite in a world, that in which
we live, where all is finite? Before getting lost in these philosophical questions, let us return to
the world of the concreteness with the knowledge we now have of this explosion-expansion of
the original cosmic egg.THERE ARE FIFTEEN BILLION YEARS.N.B. By passing. This
“astronomical” figure is very far from the calculations of the followers of the god-or-demiurge
of the Jewish bible (6 or 7.000 years according to the Torah). It approaches rather those
which were put forwards by the Hindu (and therefore probably druidic) speculations; of whom
the god-or-demons apparently were better inspired than that of Abraham of Isaac and of
Jacob, while speaking about kalpa or maha kalpa, or aiu - old Irish aes/oes: life, age, world -
or about setlocenia.
According to Guth, the emergence of physical processes of high energies can explain the
appearance of the physical universe there are approximately 10 to 15 billion years. Starting
from a quantum fluctuation, the universe, perhaps of the size of a particle with eight
dimensions or more; of which four would be those that we know: three of space (length, width,
height) and one of time, the four others having remained folded up in the forces (theory of the
super cords); the universe or bitos therefore would have emerged spontaneously from the
vacuum (kind of cosmic egg or white micro-hole), time and space being deployed
concomitantly.
The astrophysicist Trinh Xuan Thuan thinks that our universe, which comprises today tens
billion galaxies, would have been then only a tiny bubble lost in a meta-universe tens millions
or billions times larger.
This meta-universe would have been part itself of an innumerable quantity of other meta-
universes appeared during the period of inflation of the Big Boom and which would have
given birth simultaneously each one to myriads of worlds. Analogous to ours or different, but
which will always be unknowable for us.
While being based on the theory of inflation, some physicists think that it is by chance that our
universe would have given place to the appearance of the life and of the awareness, because
of the existence of conditions and favorable physical constants. Whereas the majority of the
other universes would be sterile. But nothing proves that it is so. Some scientists put forward
the idea that the universe would be auto reproductive, a kind of enormous fractal foam which
would be regenerated permanently. It would be made up of many bubbles which would
generate then other bubbles and that indefinitely. The universe would be eternal and the life
would appear in all possible forms (Andrei Linde, Stanford University). There probably exists
other worlds, which one could call anti-universe because of their characteristics, opposite of
those we know.At the beginning of the formation of the universe, this one comprised at the
same time particles of matter and of antimatter (antiparticles). The difference is due to the fact
that the antiparticles have a charge of a sign opposed to that of the particles. An electron has
a negative charge, whereas an anti electron, called positron, is positive. Their meeting causes
a reciprocal annihilation. At the origin, the particles were a little more numerous than the
antiparticles (one more for one billion in each camp or less, according to the authors). After a
generalized annihilation, only the matter particles in excess survived and formed our universe,
the antiparticles being practically absent. It is possible that other universes knew the opposite
situation.But let us return to the traditional hypotheses in the field it is the case to say.
T = zero. Fluctuation of the quantum vacuum: the cosmic egg (“the snake egg ”),
concentrated residue of the remainders of the previous universe. We don't know its size,
some say a hyper-concentrated, “pinhead“.
This “snake egg” is a symbol, of course, picturesque, but completely similar to that of the
snake of Eternity at the origin of each great cosmic era when he spits fire, and called Ananta
21
in Hindu mythology. Ananta is the snake which holds Vishnu, and it is him who makes the
world egg or Brahmanda emerge, by churning of primeval cosmic water: nothingness or
quantum vacuum.The egg symbolism is obvious. It is the concentrated unity. But it is not the
origin. Because there cannot be absolute origin. The egg is secreted by the snakes which
represent former energies in action and which, at one time in the history of the universe,
cease their evolution to undertake their involution, their concentration. The egg will be able to
release new energies, which will be spread in turn, to begin again their involution and to
produce another egg, and so on, eternally.
It is logical to consider an original point where all the secondary and fragmentary even
scattered perfections, in this world, were metamorphically united to form, by their very
meeting the Single and Total perfection. This “ogham” point of the space (to take over the
terminology used by Henry Lizeray), this top, this synthesis, this primeval atom, that modern
Druidism calls God without another additional name, we may consider that it was this cosmic
egg before its explosion. Nothing proves that these two existing ones are not always
combined one with the other but scientifically speaking, the union de facto between the soul
and the matter is a positive interaction.It is to speak so, a characteristic 5th dimension, having
its own laws which are no longer, or not yet, those neither of the matter nor of the soul.The
original cosmic egg was therefore another thing that a simple addition of soul and matter. But
let us return to our sheep…What modern “high knowers" say about the cosmic snake egg of
our ancestors? What they find in this egg at the end of their equations? Originally, it is the
Planck era or the rule of the super force and of the super cords.Time, space, light and energy,
are inseparably mixed. The laws of current physics do not exist yet. Time therefore does not
exist itself (it is only a relative notion specific to the world of the manifestation). Time will be
one of the first elements resulting from this explosion. It is even simultaneous with this initial
explosion/expansion.It is therefore here one of the first borders of any human knowledge, we
have means to know what occurred BEFORE. The most powerful theories which describe the
world coincide or diverge. The certainties fail. Only one super force (supergravity) would have
ruled supreme over the first steps of the Universe. Then, the four fundamental forces which
have an effect on the matter: gravity, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force, and finally
electromagnetism, will appear. Infinite density and temperatures. The cosmic snake egg
exploded, after everything will go very quickly.
The current astrophysicist druids believe in the existence of a unit, “a quantum” of time,
lasting 10-43 second. 10-43 second =
0,000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second (that is 42 zeros after the
comma). The birth of the universe would have coincided with this first quantum of time.
T + 10-43 second.It is the era of the great unification of the forces. Gravity will be the first of
the four forces (gravity, weak nuclear force, strong nuclear force and electromagnetic force) to
split up from the original super-force. The gravitational waves invaded cosmos at the dawn of
times, but the distant echo of their murmur was never yet detected by a terrestrial instrument.
The super force was changed into a new force called nuclear force. This one federates the
nuclear forces weak and strong, as well as the electromagnetic interaction.
After this explosion therefore… A set of elementary particles (that nobody has been able yet
to break down more finely) which form the primeval soup: electrons (electric grains), photons
(light), others (quarks…), as well as their equivalent of opposite charge. Very quickly, the
most part of the elements are annihilated with their antiparticle, while giving energy. History
could have stopped there, if nature had not had apparently a very little preference for the
matter: one particle on a billion did not have its antiparticle!
In some picoseconds, in some fractions of one second, this energy will become matter (as we
will see).Temperature is in the order of 100.000 billion of billions centigrade degrees. These
temperatures are so high that our current matter, based on protons, neutrons and electrons,
cannot exist yet.At this stage, temperature and density are still such that not only relativity as
well as gravitation are to be taken into account, but also a quantum theory of gravitation, a
theory which is at the present time only at its first steps.The first conclusions which one can
deduce from that are therefore only temporary and not very much assured; so that the most
elementary honesty is to be wary of making any too categorical assertion.Possible
consequences of such “a quantum era” in which the common notions of space and time take
22
a little vague sense; and where the most usual concepts (causality for example) are very
difficult to implement, to work out, even to understand; are, however, enthralling to study.
The current universe therefore results from the explosion there are several billion years (15 or
20) of this extraordinarily dense matter cluster. The explosion would have lasted less than
one hundredth of second. In an “ogham” point (eabadh) of the nothingness hardly large as an
egg, suddenly a tremendous concentration of energy, a fantastic surge of energy!
The Universe was born, hence time and space also.
At the beginning of the explosion, the universe almost entirely consisted of radiations, and
although still very small, this incipient universe would have had then density billion times
higher than that of lead. An amazing density: our entire universe would fit into a thimble.
The temperature would have reached the 100.000 billion of billions centigrade degrees before
falling down very quickly to only 100 billion degrees.All these events take place in a space-
time continuum with four dimensions, not yet broken, so that the universe or bitos was
unlimited. No light traversed it since the grains of light, the photons, did not exist yet, or more
exactly were still absorbed by the particles.The substance of the universe was represented by
heavy particles, placed under the aegis of continual transformations mass energy. Then, over
an extraordinarily short length, the universe crosses several stages, which earned it so many
very different faces. It is at that time that the fundamental forces which were united until then,
appeared.
T +10-36 second after the explosion i.e., 0,000000000000000000000000000000000001
second (that is 35 zeros after the comma).The temperature drops down to a few billion
centigrade degrees only.In this primitive universe, energies which made possible to keep
united the three fundamental forces begin to be exceeded. The nuclear force split in two, the
weak one and the strong one. True wars of particles take place, of which the current
components our matter will end up leaving victorious. At this time are produced what is called
monopoles (magnetic charges); impossible to get in a laboratory (they are too heavy).
Formation of the neutrinos, photons, electrons.
T + one millionth of second after the explosion.The first elementary “bricks” of the matter we
know begin to appear.
T + hundred thousandths of second after the explosion.We will pass then from a phase of
quarks to a phase of hadrons. Such a transition of phase is generally accompanied by strong
fluctuations of density, which can give place to black micro-holes, to stars of a still unknown
type, and provide various modifications to the model. Elementary particles with strong
interactions (hadrons: protons, neutrons) still have a density such, that they are always in
touch.These hadrons, which are formed of quarks, punctual particles, do not have yet any
individuality, the matter forming the universe is therefore always in fact made up of quarks or
of the various other particles which we have just seen (neutrinos, photons, electrons,
etc.).The Universe is still a true witch’s cauldron.It is a soup of burning pure energy (grains of
electricity as well as light, intangible neutrinos, elementary particles of all kinds, madly
excited, which bump each other, annihilate, and re-create themselves, according to physical
laws almost elucidated today). The permanent variations of the pressure and of the
temperature involve modifications of the elementary particles of matter and energy. The
Universe becomes increasingly unstable, and begins to swell quickly.
T +one second after the explosion.The matter overtakes antimatter. In a furious dash of
destruction, the matter profits from a light excess of force which makes it destroy its enemy
sister. The particles and their antiparticles annihilate and are changed into pure energy.
Problem: why the matter and the antimatter hadn't appeared in rigorously equal quantities at
the beginning? How the first one did gain the upper hand on its double? A huge issue which
brings into play the unit of the physics and of the latest researches.The matter then begins to
disperse, to move away from the initial “ogham” point. It is the beginning of the expansion of
the Universe… which is still not finite besides. The temperature falls of several billion degrees
per billionth of second.One second after the initial explosion, the temperature indeed fell to
“only” 6 billion centigrade degrees and the universe extended already considerably in space.A
23
few seconds after the explosion, it indeed reaches a radius of about a million kilometers, in
other words, the dimensions of a large current star. Spontaneous nuclear reactions happen.
The vertiginous fall of the density makes electrons able to turn around atomic
nuclei.Formation of the nuclei of light atoms.Birth of the protons, nuclei of the hydrogen atom.
In fact, therefore they are the first matter embryos which appear and which come in a way “to
soil” the pure energy of the initial explosion.
T + three minutes after the explosion.Three minutes later, the temperature falls to one billion
centigrade degrees only, not sufficiently low so that protons and neutrons begin to be
assembled, while forming thus the first true matter in the universe. Protons, electrons and
neutrons unite to give hydrogen atoms.Spontaneous nuclear reactions happen, reactions
during which protons and neutrons merge to give some helium, the second component of the
cosmos after hydrogen. Hydrogen and helium form 99% of our matter.
T + five minutes after the explosion.Continuation of this crazy expansion and of the fall of the
temperature related to this enormous dilution. The Universe extends and gets colder, but
more slowly. Then and then only the light spouts out.
T + 300.000 years after the explosion.The temperature of the Universe having fallen under
5.000 degrees, the electrons are put into orbit around the protons to give atoms. We entered
the era of the matter and of the first atoms (to form atoms it is necessary that cores and
electrons are linked).
T + 500.000 years after the explosion.Hydrogen and helium gather as gigantic lumps.
T + one million years after the explosion. The temperature falls down to 3.000 degrees.A few
hundreds million years after the explosion of this cosmic egg, whereas, hardly beginning its
expansion, the universe is just a tenth of what it is today, appear the first quasars; ancestors
of the galaxies and of other star clusters known with this name. Kinds of concentrates of stars
or galaxies, the quasars represent one of the oldest stages of the organized matter.
T + three billion years after the explosion.Up to that point, the cosmic mixture appeared
smooth… But, when you think it over, it comprises already, that and there, some frail lumps.
They are the residues of the gravitational waves and of the primary quantum fluctuations.
Around these primitive nuclei, some black matter, then the galaxies, will aggregate. The
individual stars light up. In parallel, the clusters and the superclusters come on. They
condense. They draw like immense structures of filaments, leaves, walls, hangings, or
bubbles separated by vacuums. Galaxies group on this thread and evolve there. Spiral or
elliptic forms appear. They brush against each other, bump into each other, and flamed in
sudden surges of activity. Seven billion years after the Big Boom, the star formation was in
full swing. Nowadays, the Milky Way gives birth hardly to one star per annum.
Birth, life and death of stars.The cycle of condensation, of evolution then of death of stars,
settles. It livens up all the galaxies. Cold and dense gas clouds contract. Under the action of
gravity, they collapse on themselves and give birth to luminous objects coated with a gas
cocoon. The stars were born. They shine through the fire of the thermonuclear fusion which
heats their heart. In this brazier are made up the chemical elements which, from there, will
enrich and sow the cosmos. Carbon, nitrogen and oxygen, are essential to the life in the
Universe. They come from these stars. Later, the stars will die. They will dilate in the form of
giants will go out as weak dwarves, or will explode in cataclysmic supernovae, which give
neutron stars and black holes. The driving force which rules the evolution of galaxies works in
such a way. Since the universe did not cease increasing at the same time - it is continuously
expanding - and getting colder, extending ad infinitum from its initial “ogham” * or eabadh
point.
* Terminology of Henry Lizeray.
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HISTORY OF THE EARTH AND OF THE LIFE.
For the Jainism, the earthly or median world (madhya-loka in Sanskrit language, * medio-
magos or * medio-dumnon in the first druidic cosmogonies) resembled a disc.Below a lower
world with seven levels (adho-Loka in Sanskrit language, * andero-dumnon or * andero-
dubnon in the first druidic cosmogonies).Above an upper world with 12+9+5 levels (urdhva
loka in Sanskrit languages, * albio-bitos, including the * vindo-bitos, in the first druidic
cosmogony).
Here is undoubtedly the true meaning of the only fear (traditionally) ascribed to the Celts, to
more or less make fun about it: that all these parts of the sky or of heaven fall over their head.
The ambassador druids indeed expressed their belief in this design of the world when, in the
fourth century before our era, they answered Alexander, who asked them what they feared
more: “no one, unless it were that Heaven might fall on us” (Strabo, book VII, chapter III).
NOTES ON THE NEW DRUIDISM AND ON THE HISTORY OF ORIGINS.
All the complex atoms with which our planet is made up result from the explosion of old stars
(our planet is therefore of the 2nd generation). There is five billion years a cloud of gas and
dust in our galaxy contracted into a celestial body of which the temperature rose to several
million degrees. A star was so formed (our sun), and the remainder of the matter dispersed
into a disc of which the heaviest elements gathered little by little. So were born the planets
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, of which the bodies were slowly organized, with a core, a
mantle and a surface crust.
It is admitted indeed that the Earth was formed there is approximately 4, 6 billion years. At the
beginning, our planet was an incandescent ball around 3.000 centigrade degrees from where
escaped poison gases: no life was possible.
The elements of control being lacking, we will restrict ourselves here to consider the moment
from when the crust was made up, by surface solidification of the mass in fusion with which is
equated the primitive globe.It is the most plausible hypothesis, and the formation of the crust
in the manner of a scoria, initially thin and fragile, then gaining importance gradually, would be
the result of a slow and continuous getting colder.
While starting from this notion, we can explain that such a carapace is thickened later,
considering the lack of homogeneity resulting from the numerous reactions of the two
elements (solid and pasty) thus superimposed and that finally these reactions were the main
causes of the great geographical phenomena.
Since 1924 (particularly with Alfred Wegener, German geophysicist born in 1880, deceased in
1930), we know that this terrestrial crust is actually made up of a mosaic of tectonic plates, of
which mobility causes some reactions of the Earth's crust.The surface of Earth is fragmented
in a dozen rigid plates (including six very large), which are drifting very very slowly, a little like
icebergs on the Ocean.According to Wegener, the continental masses would have been
originally joined together in a vast block, the Pangea, floating on the subjacent magma. Some
breaking phenomena having separated them (a long time after their formation), then they
drifted away, pulled by various movements.400 million years ago, the continents were still
joined in one block coming into vegetation little by little. This Pangea will be worked by
orogeny i.e., the formations of mountains (400 million years ago: “Caledonian” fold of the end
of Silurian, “Hercynian” fold of Carboniferous, etc.).
During the Permian, the last period of the primary era which succeeds Carboniferous, from
280 million years, the climate, become drier on this Pangea will support the expansion of
reptiles, as we will see in a moment. The plants will become rarer and will adapt to this new
climate.Certain marine groups like the trilobites, on the other hand, will disappear.180 million
years ago approximately, Pangea was divided in two. Hyperborea (a continent including
Central Asia, Europe and North America) and Gondwanaland or Gondwana (continent
including Africa, Arabia, Antarctic, Madagascar and South America).Between the two an
ocean named Tethys.The appearance of the Atlantic 120 million years ago will dislocate
Gondwana into three subcontinents separated by a Y-shaped break in Earth's crust : India,
Australia-Antarctic and South America/Africa.
Then there was.
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- During the lower Cretaceous separation of the Africa-South America block, by the
appearance of South Atlantic; as well as dissociation of Australia from Antarctic.
- During the higher Cretaceous approximately 135 million years ago, Hyperborea began itself
to be dismembered in two sub-blocks, with the appearance of North Atlantic: North America
on a side and Eurasia of the other.
- During the Tertiary, link-up between the two Americas, collision of India (of Deccan) with
Asia (hence the appearance of the Himalaya) and collision of Africa with Eurasia (hence the
Alps, the Atlas, etc.).
THE TREE OF LIFE (IN FACT MORE PRECISELY A BUSH): the origins of terrestrial life
We can see over the pages of the Book of Kells a broad range of illuminations made of
interlace, ornamented drop caps and multicolored drawings. The texts written in semi-uncial
insular writing are illustrated with numerous symbols, decorated with many mystical and
chimeric patterns. The author takes over in it a theme very largely widespread there in Celtic
graphics, the development of a woody plant going out of a vase… representing the tree of life,
decorated of the seven groups of living beings that the ancient high knowers recognized:
plants, insects, fish, reptiles, birds, other animals and man. This book also contains some
humorous illustrations. Thus we can see in it for example on a full page, a cat chasing a
mouse robber of hosts…
There is also in the cathedral of Chartres (in France) a Roman capital where we see
emerging from the stone (the shaft of the column having succeeded the original tree) a plant
which is eaten by an animal; which is changed itself into a man. Same thing in Saint-Benoit-
sur-Loire where a capital shows us the bonds linking man, animal and plants.
But what tells us more precisely the modern druids in connection with the origin of life?
The life cannot exist in the furnace of stars, no more than in the cosmic vacuum, but on
planets neither too cold nor too heat. It was a long time believed that the organic molecules,
even rather simple, like alcohol, cholesterol, urea, could be produced only by living
beings.Today it is known that it is absolutely not the case, and that it is undoubtedly the
opposite: the life was probably built by accumulation of these “bricks” of elementary life,
appeared spontaneously.Life did not appear with a stroke of a magic wand. It settled at
random of chemical reactions while initially making it possible to certain molecules to
reproduce and to develop, at the expense of other chemical elements, then by providing
these properties to cells. But by the way what’s the life? We can see there only a series of
simple chemical reactions which, in a precise given order, and with consumption of energy,
enables a reproduction, a development and a growth, by adapting to the changes of the
external environment. But let us admit the result is a little “magic!”
Context.
When the Earth was formed, at the same time as the whole of the solar system, the heaviest
particles formed the core of our planet, while the lightest molecules remained in the periphery.
Because of its mass, the Earth could not retain gases like helium and hydrogen which
dispersed in space (only the gas planets like Jupiter had a sufficient mass).The gases which
formed the first atmosphere have two different origins.Dust, and other rocks, attracted to the
Earth by gravity, brought steam. This vapor, released at the time of the impact, was spread on
the surface of the planet.The simple molecules (made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and
nitrogen), by moving away from the Sun, joined to form more complex and less reactive
molecules. These gases were partly attracted by the Earth.From rocks, still in fusion, and
from many volcanoes, are also escaped some gases of comparable nature.Thus, the planet it
got dressed little by little with a dense and relatively thick atmosphere.The composition of the
primitive atmosphere still gives rise to sharp discussions in scientific circles. For some people,
it was especially made of ammonia (NH3), of methane (CH4), carbon gas (CO2) and water
(H2O). But currently the majority of the scientists think rather than this composition was more
simply containing CO2, molecular nitrogen (N2) and in the form of nitrites (NOx), little
molecular hydrogen (H2) and much of steam.In addition to these gases, it is necessary to
note the important presence of sulfide hydrogen (H2S), formaldehyde and cyanide hydrogen
(HCN). In other words, it was a bit smelly!With the general getting colder of the Earth, water,
26
still in the form of vapor, will condense therefore to involve torrential rains (which would
produce oceans!)The Earth resembles Venus then. Indeed, seen from space, our planet
shows then only a thick layer of clouds shaken by violent cyclonic movements. The
greenhouse effect, due to the high content of carbon gas (or methane), maintains a climate
very hot, but also very stable, on most of the planet. It also compensates for a still pale Sun
and little heat (which radiates only 75% of its current energy).The absence of gas oxygen,
and therefore of ozone, enables the aggression of the molecules of the atmosphere and of
the surface of the oceans by the ultraviolet radiation of the Sun.The torrential rains had other
effects than to fill the seas and the oceans, the erosion and the soil leaching brought to the
oceans very large quantities of various molecules to form the “nutrient soup.”The continents
were then covered only with sand and clay resulting from the erosion of the primitive rocks.
Other sources of enrichment of oceans are underwater volcanism and hydrothermalism
(where the water which infiltrated in the depths of the soil, goes up loaded with minerals under
the effect of heat).Because of all these dissolved substances (of which much iron, in ferrous
form Fe2 +, phosphates and H2S), water was to be very acid, as we can currently see for
certain volcanic lakes. Its temperature was not more pleasant, it was to briskly exceed 100
centigrade degrees (without boiling, because the atmospheric pressure was stronger than
currently). Clay and many mineral salts or other dissolved substances coming from the
continents and from the atmosphere accumulate in still clear water of oceans. Soon all these
mineral matters saturate water to form the primitive soup. It is the importance of theses few
atoms (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Sulfur) in the primeval soup
which explain all the organic molecules to come.
THE MODERN CAULDRON OF CERIDWEN.
The terrestrial life, consuming oxygen and carbon, could not be born outside, because the
atmosphere of this time was deprived of oxygen, and the ultraviolet rays of the sun burned the
earth. Moreover, there were also often volcanic eruptions.On the other hand, in the water
protected from radiation, everything was possible. The experiment of Stanley Miller in this
respect is a great classic. In 1952, this famous chemist locked up in his cauldron of Ceridwen
(a glass jar): methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water, regarded as the main components of
the initial earth atmosphere. Then, with electric shocks, he simulated the influence of the solar
radiation and of the storms which were to wave this atmosphere. Lastly, he opened the jar
and he analyzed: what a surprise! Miller found in his mixture, among other complex organic
compounds… some amino-acids similar to those which form our genes and our
enzymes.Under the effect of various forms of energy, the mineral matters therefore will form
the first organic molecules.
- Heat: coming from lava, from hydrothermal springs and from solar radiation, provides part of
the energy necessary to the mineral matter transformation into organic matter, it also supports
the molecular shaking which is essential to meetings and therefore to reactions.
- Electricity: the lightning, coming from the atmospheric movements, took part in the creation
of new molecules.
- UV Radiation: this solar radiation, very harmful, enabled many syntheses of organic
molecules by making possible the release of the electrons of certain molecules, and their use
in the biological reactions.
All the molecules thus formed were joined together in the primeval ocean under the effect of
the rains. Once in water, the molecules were protected from UV radiation.
These UV rays also have a destroying action towards molecules not very stable or lengthily
exposed (be careful of too long bronzing!) This protection takes place only at a certain depth.
This made the molecules able to use a “gradient” of energy to join (by hydrolysis or thanks to
the presence of catalysts like lime).Simple organic molecules thus appeared at that time.
- Some amino-acids (which are at the origin of proteins).
- Some “oses,” as the ribose formed starting from the formaldehyde (which are at the base of
sugars or of carbohydrates).
- Certain fatty acids (which are the causes of greases or lipids).
- Other important molecules like thioesters, formed with H2S, purine bases (like the adenine
formed with HCN), then certain nucleotides…
27
EVOLUTION OF THE SPECIES.
On a human time scale, animals and vegetables give the impression of a great stability. So,
until the 18th century, the scientists admitted the Earth had always been populated with the
same fauna and the same flora: it was the fixist doctrine of the Bible.To explain the origin of
the species, the ones called upon the creationism. The living world counts “as many species
as couples went out from the hands of God.”Others called upon the spontaneous generation.
A priori, the fixist attitude is not lacking in logic: immediate and limited in time observation
shows that a cat is born from a couple of cats, itself generated by two couples of cats, and so
on. Fixism is the natural corollary of creationism, which admits, at the origin of the existence
of the living beings, the creating action of a superhuman power which, since the beginning,
fixed them in a definitive form. It is understood that, in a Judaeo-Islamic-Christian world which
amalgamated fixist theory and faith, much temerity was needed to state an evolutionary thesis
so little in harmony with the theological doctrines.
We can summarize evolutionism as follows.The species change with time. The current forms
drift from older forms, simpler, so that the living world underwent a progressive and continual
evolution.The appearance of transformism supposed that man were aware of geological time,
but also that it was realized that the whole of the living beings formed a progressive series,
therefore that they could be classified. The evolutionism resulted from the need to classify
animals and plants.The Antiquity, which knows only a very limited number of living species,
hardly feels the need to classify. It is with the Renaissance, when descriptions multiply, that
we see fist true classifications appear.The transformist theory of Buffon. The French Buffon
(1707-1788) is one of the first to tackle the problem while accumulating pieces of evidence for
“transformism” (progressive change of the living beings, under the influence of their
environment); even if he does not express its principle clearly. He disputes particularly the
“biblical age” of 7.000 years, officially admitted to be that of the Earth, and makes the origins
of the world dating back 70.000 years (even 500.000 years, in some of his notes).
Are the ass and the horse originally from the same stock? Are they, as nomenclatures say,
of the same family? “ Buffon realizes well that the word family in this case is completely full
with the idea of relationship.Noticing very lucidly that to answer yes is to admit that Man and
Ape are also of the same stock, the famous naturalist moves back in front of the audacity of
the assumption. It is Maupertuis (1698-1759) who, the first, in 1751, affirms the evolutionism,
by explaining how from only two individuals, the multiplication of the dissimilar species could
have ensued. Diderot (1713-1784) follows in his footsteps. Later Lamarck (1744-1829),
professor in the Natural history museum, taking over the ideas of the two philosophers, will
bring back the problem on the scientific level and will propose a theoretical explanation of the
mechanism of transformation of the species.Lamarck is therefore the precursor of the theory
of evolution according to which the species change over time. Example: the neck of the
giraffe lengthened little by little to be able to reach the branches.Jean-Baptist de Monet,
knight of Lamarck, had been a soldier then a botanist, when the French government (in 1793)
transforming the Royal Garden into a national museum of Natural history, entrusted to him the
chair of zoology of “Animals without vertebrae.” Then he was fifty-year-old Lamarck therefore
begins a career of zoologists. But what one remembers today of his work, it is the statement
of the first evolutionary theory. The philosophers and the scientists, who had, before him,
supported the transformist idea, had well suggested some explanations to give an account of
it but Lamarck builds the first coherent system.The Lamarck theory was expounded, mainly,
in zoological Philosophy (1809) and in the Natural history of the animals without vertebrae
(1815). Here is a summary of it: the appearance of increasingly complex living forms is due to
the power of life, a property inherent in the live matter on which Lamarck explained nothing
more.It is through this power that was settled the progression which goes from micro-
organisms (appeared by spontaneous generation) to Man.If the power of life was alone to act,
the whole of the living beings would draw a continuous linear series. It is the influence of the
external environment (which Lamarck calls: the circumstances) which makes that this line
branches. Lamarck notes that the living beings can be classified according to a scale of
increasing complexity. He cannot explain it by other means than by the evolution which leads
the simplest beings to Man. In 1809, he therefore proposes without ambiguity his theory,
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which is based on two great principles: the existence in any organism of an internal tendency
to improvement; the possibility for the organism of adapting to the conditions of its
environment. But the theory of Lamarck passes so to speak unperceived. His arguments are
not always very convincing, and he comes up against the ideas of this other great French
scientist who is Georges Cuvier, a defender of fixism.
For Darwin the driving force of this evolution of species, it is the natural selection. One day
giraffes with a little longer neck appeared. This advantage having been then selected, the
same phenomenon could reproduce at another time and so on until the giraffes have a neck
of the current length.Thus, as soon as 1859, transformism wins over the scientific world.
Between 1930 and 1950, Theodosius Dobzhansky , Julian Huxley , Bernhard Rensch, Ernst
Mayr and other researchers, worked out a more total theory of evolution (called synthetic
theory or neo-Darwinism). It integrates the knowledge acquired since Darwin’s work,
particularly on the genetics of populations.A population forms, within a species, a subset
whose members reproduce exclusively between them, because they are separate
geographically of the members of the other populations. There exists generally a very great
genetic diversity within a people.A good example is given to us by the cactus finch (Geospiza
conirostris), living in the Galapagos Islands, in which the size and the shape of the beak
generally vary in an important way from an individual to another. The year 1977 having been
a year of severe drought in these islands, characterized by a rarefaction of the usual food of
finches (small seeds, already opened fruits, crawling insects); one observed the following
year, a very marked change in the population of finches. The vast majority of the finches
which had survived had indeed a beak larger or sharper than the average of finches living
before the drought. The natural selection had supported the individuals able to tear off the
barks to find the insects which hide below, to open the fruits of the cacti, and to break the
hardest seeds.
Paleontology teaches us that life appeared there is about three billion years. In the form of
bacteria. But it does not make it possible to know how the bacterial “cell” was born from the
inert matter. In the 19th century, the French Louis Pasteur showed that micro-organisms
could not be formed spontaneously in an environment deprived of living germs, and his
conclusions were never called into question since. That man could accept the spontaneous
generation of a cell in the time when it was thought that it was only a protein lump and when it
was imagined that a simple albumin molecule was capable of metabolism is understandable.
But today we know the complexity of cellular infrastructure; the thing would be contrary to
reason.Is not there, in that case, contradiction between this experiment of Pasteur and the
evolutionary theory?
No! Louis Pasteur showed that the appearance of spontaneous generations was impossible
at our time, but in another physical chemical environment, as that of the Earth there is a few
billion years, it was different. Geology and astrophysics teach us that, there is approximately
four billion years, the earth atmosphere was made up of steam (H2O), methane (CH4),
carbon gas (CO2), carbon monoxide, ammonia (NH3), nitrogen (N2); and finally hydrogen
sulfide (H2S). The absence of oxygen prohibits the presence of a layer of ozone in high-
altitude. The ultraviolet radiation produced by the Sun reaches all the surface of the sphere in
that case and provide the energy necessary to the synthesis of a large number of organic
molecules from the components of the atmosphere.Oparine supplemented the evolutionary
thesis by imagining therefore, between the mineral and the autotrophic living one, a series of
stages. Other scientists followed and the idea was improved.
Stanley Miller and Harold Clayton Urey in 1952, showed with their modern cauldron of
Ceridwen that this synthesis is possible by subjecting a mixture of gas inspired of this
primitive atmosphere, to electric shocks. The most part of the amino-acids which exist in the
proteins of the living beings are obtained thus experimentally. Currently, we know a large part
of the answers to the problem of the prebiological synthesis of the amino-acids, sugars,
organic bases, lipids and phosphates necessary to the appearance of life on the primitive
Earth. Various ideal models make it possible to explain the evolution to cyanobacteria, which
29
are the oldest living organisms, since they were found in grounds dating back to almost three
billion and half years.
The synthesis of simple organic substances, amino-acid, sugars, nitrogenous bases, which
results from the effect of the ultraviolet radiation on the initial atmosphere, can surprise. It is,
however, based on numerous considerations. The upper atmosphere of the Earth contains a
hydrogen which is dispersed slowly in space, in consequence of the insufficiency of Earth’s
attraction. The big planets of the solar system have an atmosphere made of methane and
ammonia.The hydrogen, which is the main constituent of the solar system, would have been
gradually lost by small planets.Then these substances are polymerized into proteins, starch,
nucleic acids, which concentrate in droplets (coacervates) in which start the metabolic
reactions under the effect of metal catalysts. The appearance of enzymes, by the
complication of the structure of proteins, activates metabolism. This stage matches the birth
of the first anaerobic heterotrophic organism.Between mineral catalysts and enzymes,
intermediate stages can be imagined. Thus the catalase, which breaks up the hydrogen
peroxide, is made up of a protein and of a heme molecule with an iron atom in its center.
However the enzyme is ten million times more active than the isolated heme, itself thousand
times more active than a hydrated iron molecule. The heme, rather simple molecule, could be
used as a catalyst.
The cell, first living being.
Life on Earth appeared perhaps much sooner than we thought.According to certain
researchers, life would have appeared on our planet, there is approximately four billion years.
But this thesis is still much discussed. What is sure, on the other hand, it is that one
discovered tiny traces of it in an iron deposit of the South-west of Greenland, of which the
rock, the oldest sedimentary rock known, contained a mixture of carbons. However it could be
produced only by living organisms, there is 3, 85 billion years.Researchers said in the journal
Nature have discovered fossil micro-organisms that are between 3.77 and 4.29 billion years,
only a few hundred million years less than our planet, which was formed 4.567 billion years
ago. Scientists have documented these microfossils in quartz layers at the Nuvvuagittuq
Greenstone Belt a geological site located in north-eastern Quebec. This outcrop is known to
house the oldest known rock (4.29 billion years).Thanks to laser images of the collected
samples, we were able to identify microfossils, which are the oldest known in the world, said
Matthew Dodd, of the University College of London, in a video posted on the journal's web
site. In diameter they are half that of a human hair. In length, they are up to half a millimeter.
To remain cautious, scientists have given these micro-organisms a minimum age of 3.77
billion years. It is already 300 million years older than the oldest microfossils known so far,
which were found in Australia and are 3,460 billion years old. Micro-fossils have been formed
at the bottom of the sea, near "hydrothermal vents,” which warm the waters and are the result
of volcanic activity, say the researchers.One could observe in an Australian deposit the
stages of the division of a cell. A fossil reproduction in a way, and we can therefore make the
first undeniable signs of life date back to 3, 80 billion years.
Bacteria appeared on Earth, there are 3, 7 billion years. By their activity they thus formed our
atmosphere, our ground (chalk cliffs, mineral deposits) and it is these bacteria which
equipped our planet with oxygen. The oldest known bacterium, which is less than one
thousandths of a millimeter, was found in a deposit of South Africa which dates back to 3,2
billion years.The simplest cells do not have a core: they are bacteria and blue algae
(cyanophyta). They appeared perhaps in the hot water which spouts out underwater funds.
These tiny organisms can be found in a fossil state. The oldest organic productions
recognized are limestone masses with variable shapes, named stromatolites, and that is
ascribed to the activity of bacteria and blue algae. We know some in Zimbabwe with an age
that exceeds 2.500 million years. Of more recent times (2 000 to 1.000 million years) we know
in Finland anthracite (called shungite) of which the organic origin is attested by a high ratio
C12/C13.
Ontario provided, in a flint, algae (perhaps also some lower mushrooms).
!----- --------------- ---------------------------------- --------- !
30
The end of Precambrian (1 000 to 600 million years) therefore will see multiplying the
stromatolites which form true reefs. With the approach of Cambrian multicellular animals
(metazoans): annelids, brachiopods, perhaps jellyfish, will join them.
- 680 million years.The evolution did a decisive leap. Cells up to that point isolated, join to
form the first multicellular organisms (metaphyta or metazoans). Some remain still today
without having truly evolved, such aquatic algae, plants without roots, vessels, sheet nor
flower (a 680-million-year-old alga was discovered in the South of China). Man is also a
metazoan for that matter. His body is only a sophisticated association of several billion cells.
The aquatic world is overrun gradually by living organisms. If some are fixed on the ocean
floor, others float, as the microscopic beings which form the plankton, or move in various
manners skillfully: by means of fins, body waving, or by propulsion of water jets. Certain
beings float on the water surface like the radiolarian; others take refuge in the marine depths.
- 600 million years.Appearance of animals of the jellyfish kind, coral or arthropods (group to
which today shellfish belong). See the deposit of Ediacara, discovered in 1947, in Australia.
- 570 million years.One found in 1997, in the South of China, in phosphate quarries located at
600 kilometers to the south-west of the Yangtze River, tinny embryos; of jellyfish, sponges,
crabs, trilobites or clams; 570 million years old.
Animals diversify and multiply. By absorbing mineral salt dissolved in water, they forge for
themselves carapaces and shells. These hard parts will become fossils.
The warm climate of the Cambrian probably favored the appearance of these new animals.
Some, like sponges, brachiopods and gastropods, belong to still living animal groups (for
example the snails), but others disappeared.Cambrian seas contain representatives of all the
animal branches, except for that of the vertebrate ones. More than 1.500 species of marine
invertebrates were counted. The plankton, which seems to dominate as soon as the end of
the Precambrian, is still well represented, especially by the radiolarian and the jellyfish. But at
the beginning of the period, the littoral shoals are invaded by an entire fauna, of sponges,
worms, echinoderms, brachiopods, mollusks and arthropods (trilobites, shellfish). According
to the relative abundance of the found species, they are the trilobites (60% of the species)
and the brachiopods (30%) which are predominant. The trilobites had a body covered with a
kind of armor and were able to move. They had legs like those of shrimps.
- 450 million years.The first vertebrates appear. They are the agnatha, called “jawless fish,”
because their mouth is only a simple opening. Besides during Silurian sea animals will
continue to multiply. First “true“ fish, the first vertebrate, equipped with jaws, finally are born,
they are the acanthodians.
!-- ---------------- -------------------- -------------------- !
If the Cambrian seas, swarm with life (the protozoa, unicellular animal, appeared for a long
time already) an absolute silence, on the other hand, hangs over the continents given up to
the only mineral kingdom. It is only at the end of Silurian that plants first, then animals, will go
so far as to conquer the emerged lands.
In the Devonian, covering England and Scandinavia in particular, the “Hyperborea or old red
sandstone Continent” extended on Northern Europe.” Through the Atlantic and the
Greenland, this continent undoubtedly continued to the Canadian Shield.
On the surface of this huge land, temporary lakes house first fresh water vertebrate, while
plants colonize the dry land: it was necessary that the first air being was autotrophic. The
algae indeed ended up producing a large quantity of oxygen. Released by the sea plants, this
oxygen accumulated gradually in the atmosphere. There is 2, 5 billion years, there was a
thousand times less of it than currently.Released in the atmosphere, oxygen was
consequently bombarded by radiation, which involved the change into ozone of its lower
layer.Most of dangerous radiation were by the way stopped and life could go out from
31
water.The vegetable world is metamorphosed: new plants succeed to settle on the dry land.
Successive improvements indeed made it possible the plants to go out of the water and to
settle on the land. They first acquired roots (still primitive among moss) and their reproduction
system gradually improved. To pump the water from the soil, these plants will also acquire
vessels with rigid walls, vessels which will enable them to make water circulate and to stand
up.The plants having the means of proliferating on land, the animals will be able to benefit
from them.The first plants were settled on the dry land at the end of Silurian. Examples
lichens, moss, fern.The first plants had neither sheets nor flowers, and were not more than
four or 5 cm high. In this miniature jungle, the scorpions hunted the centipede. At the
beginning of Devonian plants were even less than 50 cm high, but at the end of this same
time there were, on the other hand, already trees being able to grow up to two meters. The
Devonian land flora is known particularly by the discovery of an old peat bog, made at Rhynie
in Scotland.
- 420 million years.The animals go out from water and launch too into the adventure of the dry
land.Invertebrates, scorpions and centipedes, arrive on the continent. Water is no longer the
only life reservoir.The invertebrates of this time are represented by the eurypterids, gigantic
arthropods (some are two meters long) of which first appendices are a pair of chelicerae.
They were frightening carnivores.With regard to vertebrates, the Devonian is characterized by
numerous fish protected by an osseous carapace, located in the skin depth, and recovering
head and thorax: the armored fish.
- 400 million years.The sea continues to become populated by an increasingly diversified life.
Mollusks live on the shoals beside brachiopods and trilobites. Sea lilies, fixed at the bottom, in
the middle of the coral, ripple. There are also jellyfish, jawless fish, and some kinds of
scorpionfish, the eurypterids.In the Devonian fish therefore will diversify still a little more.
Some are equipped, in addition to their gills, with lungs. For example, the dipneusti.
For more details or accuracy see the various scientific works on the subject which are the
only ones to be authoritative in this field, in what concerns us we do nothing but popularize
these notions.
NOTE ON THE PRIMARY SALMON OF OUR ANCESTORS.
We could see all the importance attached by the high knowers of the Antiquity, to sea life, to
fish, and particularly to the primordial salmon, in charge of witnessing and speaking about the
past.The today “druids” attach the same importance to another fish, called coelacanth.A fish
come from the earliest times, only survivor of an order of vertebrates that is believed quite
extinct for sixty million years, but which could form one of the missing links between water life
and land life. An animal of color slate blue, with round shapes, of which size does not exceed
two meters.If fish could speak (like the famous she-ass of Balaam in the Bible), this one
would eclipse all of them as regards ancient history. It knew the dinosaurs, coexisted with the
first flowers and the first birds… and with many other still more archaic species, since its
origin dates back to the Devonian, three hundred and seventy million years ago (no less).
Such a prehistoric fish that the possibility of observing alive specimens of them would never
have come to the mind of the scientists; unanimously convinced that the big extinction of
species at the end of the secondary era had irremediably wiped it from the surface of the
Globe.The coelacanth belongs to the family of the sacropterygii also known as “lobe-finned,”
to which also the dipneusti and the rhipidistia belong. A family of fish as there exists so many
others, if it is only that it probably counts our ancestor fish among its members! And that this
one, this famous missing link which would explain the passage of the aquatic life to the land
life, would be perhaps, precisely, a direct cousin of the coelacanth.How this ancestor fish was
made? The entire problem is there. Some of its close relatives, of course, were indeed found,
but in a state of fossils, and generally always in a very sorry state. You guess therefore easily
the hope that could raise the discovery of this living fossil that the evolution seems to have
miraculously spared, in search of our distant origins. Intact since tens of millions years, was
its image going to provide us, finally, that of its ancestors, and therefore of ours? A hypothesis
all the more plausible as the coelacanth, dissected by the discerning eye of specialists,
showed quickly solid aptitudes: a promising cranial anatomy and a remnant of the lung, of
course, nonfunctional, but, however, a vestige. But the only problem is that the dipneusti, still
alive; have too, serious assets to apply for the title. Equipped with functional lungs, the
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majority has also internal nostrils not forgetting the fins. The diving carried out in 1986, made
it possible to discover a very remarkable phenomenon. The coelacanth swims like a horse or
a dog trots, while using its four fins in cross synchronization. An observation corroborating the
assumption according to which fish formerly went out of water to evolve towards first
quadrupeds, and corresponding once again, to what we may expect from a precursor of
tetrapods.Apart from other fish announcing the most common groups currently, we find
therefore at that time, as we have just seen, some shapes particularly interesting by their
possibility of living out of water: dipneusti and crossopterygians.The dipneusti are represented
today by several genera, of which the Neoceratodus of the Australian rivers. During the dry
season, it locked itself in still wet mud where its swim bladder acts as lung and enables it to
breathe.
- 370 million years.
At the end of Devonian, whereas the armored fish died out, Crossopterygii succeed in leaving
the water environment, and give birth to the first land vertebrates: the batrachians. These
batrachians still remain very primitive, they have six fingers and keep certain features of their
ancestors the fish (a fin for example). The oldest land vertebrate, the ichthyostega
(discovered in 1931, in Greenland) is approximately one meter long. It was about a rather
heavy animal, but he could nevertheless walk because he had four members.These even
members are true legs: it is a tetrapod. However, curiously, its tail has a fin, as in fish. The
gathering of characteristics belonging today, the ones to fish, others to batrachians, makes it
an intermediate or composite shape. Ichthyostega get perhaps to dry land in order to seek a
new lake when the pond where he lived had been suddenly drained. It is during these travels
that he grew accustomed to land life, all the more so as the continent was already colonized
with plants and insects forming easy preys.
- 360 million years.The hot and wet climate will support the development of gigantic marshy
forests, colonized by many animals. Between the gigantic ferns and the trees being able to be
thirty meters high (coniferous, etc.) the first winged insects fly, dragonflies genus. They are
the largest flying insects having ever existed. The flowers still do not exist; they will appear
only at the end of the secondary era.Specialists call this period carboniferous because dead
plants accumulated in the forests gave later coal, and anthracite.In the Carboniferous one, the
going out of water, thoroughly prepared during the Devonian, is therefore achieved fully. The
carboniferous flora, very exuberant, above all consists of vascular cryptogams.
At the beginning of Carboniferous, animals are still very dependent upon the water
environment. The amphibians live on land and in water where they lay their eggs.The
tadpoles gone out of their egg must therefore still live in water. After their metamorphosis,
they begin to get to the dry land without necessarily moving away from damp environments.
The amphibians multiply and diversify, but still hesitate to definitively give up water for
land.Thereafter, thanks to the amniotic egg, the vertebrate will be freed gradually from this
water slavery. Become reptiles (of which some resemble crocodile) they will be able to move
away from water and to conquer Pangea (the earth).These first reptiles (thecodonts) are,
however, themselves, still more or less aquatic. North America provided well-preserved
specimens of them. These were massive animals of which the size fluctuated around one
meter. In the airs, gigantic insects live. A dragonfly with a wingspan of 60 cm was found in
Commentry (France). Other insects live on the ground.The climate was very hot and wet, the
forests luxuriant.Vast savannas covered emerged lands, while abundant water plants grew in
lakes.Diplodocus and brachiosaurs were more or less amphibious.Other reptiles lived on dry
land. It is the case of the tyrannosaur which, by its powerful claws and its strong teeth, seems
a frightening carnivore. Fortunately that triceratops is well armed for defense.In the secondary
era, reptiles of an extraordinary variety have overrun all the environments and they will give
birth to mammals, as well as to birds, because reptiles have flown or more exactly glided
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before birds (case of the Quetzalcoatlus or of the pterodactyl).It is curious to note that the
Jurassic ichthyosaur and the current dolphin could find the fish shape of their distant ancestor
the “primordial salmon” called coelacanth. Good example of convergence!Then came the time
of the dinosaurs. They live on land and the most part lay eggs with solid shells. They have a
skin covered with thick scales and claws of all kinds. A certain number of them would have
been reptiles with blood hot like that of mammals. Some of these monsters had the size of a
small chicken; others would have been able to be high as a house of four floors or were as
long as four buses. Seismosaurus for example, was to be 36 meters long and perhaps
weighed 50 tons.Some were inoffensive and ate plants.Others were pitiless hunters which
shredded their preys as with razor blades to eat them.
- 200 million years.For various reasons rather badly known and besides prone to controversy,
the dinosaurs will end up disappearing while thus leaving a free hand to the mammals which
therefore will be able to thrive and multiply. The first of the known mammals is the
dimetrodon.
- 80 million years.From insectivorous to Primate.Current Tupaids are small arboreal
mammals, the size of a rat, and which live in Eastern Asia or Indonesia.Their anatomy is such
as zoologists and paleontologists do not know if they should be counted among Insectivorous
or among Primates. This “organic indecision” is well an indication of the beginning of a
phylum and Tupaids therefore are admitted among Primates. The fossils of their ancestors
are very rare… the only authentic shape is the Anagale genus of the inferior Oligocene in
Mongolia. It is already a lower primate, like the prosimians.
- 70 million years.The first primates appeared at the end of the Cretaceous. Oldest were
discovered in the Rocky Mountains, in Purgatory Hill, in Montana. This is why the
paleontologists called them “Purgatorius.”It is the ancestor of prosimians: literally primitive
apes. Represented today by the lemurs (in particular of Madagascar), the tarsiers of the Indo-
Malay area, the lorises and the Galapagos (in Southeast Asia and Africa), etc. and some
simians (including anthropoids).These purgatorius are hardly 20 centimeters tall, but they
were primates, because they had flat nails and not claws, had a stereoscopic vision and
udders in pectoral position. The prosimians thrived between - 65 and - 40 million years, in
Europe and North America.
- 50 million years.Circa fifty million years before our era, the Plesiadapis, of the size of a small
squirrel, was probably semi-arboreal and semi terrestrial. Discovered initially in the Paris
Basin, and described since 1877, then in the Rocky Mountains and the West of the United
States of America. Its domain was that of the then single continent, in the northern
hemisphere, made of what will become North America, Greenland and Europe and over
which the temperature was ranged between 15 and 20 centigrade degrees.
- 40 million years.Between 70 and 40 million years, at the time of the inferior Oligocene, a first
evolution will happen. It goes from Africa and takes place at the same time in America and
Europe.The prosimians disappear from North America and Europe circa - 37 million years (at
the end of the Eocene) the climate having changed. The simians appear then. These simians
will be classified in platyrrhines in America and catarrhines in Africa-Europe.The first had a
long tail and a large nasal septum; the seconds had a shorter tail and a thin nasal septum.
Only, the catarrhines will be the subject of our study, because it is from them that is outlined
the “descent” towards the hominids.In this catarrhini group apidium and parapithecus line up,
which have both still 36 teeth, and are taller than prosimians. It is thought that some of them
reached the American continent on natural rafts. At that time, indeed, the Atlantic, although
already broad, had not reached its current size.
- 35 million years.In addition to apidium and parapithecus, the basin of Fayum in Egypt
delivered us many remains of more evolved primates (- 35 with 25 million years). The dental
formula is identical to that of simians and skull in which eye socket is separated from the
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temporal fossa by an almost complete septum. Their morphology evokes chimpanzees or
gorillas.Therefore appearance of the four stocks of primates from which all the current groups
will rise, including man. All these “catarrhinii” have 32 teeth and have as names:
oligopithecus, the ancestor of the oreopitheci or small monkeys, aeolopithecus, the ancestor
of the gibbon, aegyptopithecus, the ancestor of the great anthropomorphic apes,
propliopithecus, the ancestor of the Ramapithecus and of the hominids.IN SHORT.To tell the
history of the last twenty billion years of our world, it is to tell a continuous phenomenon;
where the life seems a complicated state of the matter, and where the Man, with his
reflections on himself, the Life, the History, on the Universe, is a state even more
complicated, of matter. The paleontology of our enemy brothers, heirs on the scientific side to
ancient druidism, shows us that the groups of living beings appeared in an order of increasing
complexity. The Cambrian seas are colonized by cyanophyta or bacteria before thallophytes
and protozoa appear.
Among metazoan the sponges seem early come, whereas the vertebrate arrives the last. In
each branch, the most complex beings appear the last: all the primary insects are with
progressive metamorphosis. Among the vertebrate we find a progress of which steps match
the stages of the conquest of the air environment.The first fish are purely aquatic.
Then the Crossopterygii invent lungs and choanae, in the Devonian. Amphibians, at the end
of the same period, get the walker limb. Lastly, in Carboniferous, the reptiles take a further
step with land hatching eggs in which the embryo, enclosed in a cavity, the amnion, bathes in
a little “portable ocean.” We find among plants a similar evolution.Being based on the
transformist concept, paleontologist druid endeavors to lay out the fossil shapes in
evolutionary lines, in order to trace the family tree of the current species. Thus the first
amphibians (ichthyostegids) are linked directly to the Crossopterygian fish, which seems the
ancestors of tetrapods.However, in detail, the things are more complicated, because the
Crossopterygiian group is divided itself in two subgroups. Indeed, beside those which have
choanae, and about which we spoke previously, individuals line up which are deprived of it
and which are called cœlacanthids.The interest of the group of cœlacanthids, it is that it did
not die out, since it is represented currently by the latimeria of the Mozambique Channel, very
similar to its Devonian ancestors. It is, with the lingula, a good example of “living fossil.”As for
the Crossopterygii with choanae, they divide into two subgroups, according to the position of
the bones of their muzzle.However, some similar differences exist today in the batrachians,
between anurans (frogs, toads) and urodeles (tritons, salamanders).
Reptiles being attached to the “anuran” type, it is estimated that the Crossopterygii with
choanae of Devonian form two lineages. One having produced the group of urodeles the
other having given anurans and reptiles. It is to this last lineage that osteolepis
belongs.Urodeles and anurans which therefore constitute the same step of the progressive
evolution of these two lineages, form a structural stage: the batrachian stage.Altogether the
Crossopterygii are the stock of three lineages of which one, conservative, remained at the fish
stage (cœlacanthids) while the others, progressive, evolved to stages of greater
complexity.The various classes of vertebrate appeared successively and in the order of
classification. Each group appeared discreetly then flourished, colonized various
environments, and finally headed towards extinction. Thus in the Secondary, reptiles prevail
through many and very various shapes, of which certain gigantic, as well on the continents
(diplodocus, brachiosaurs…) as in the seas (plesiosaurs, ichthyosaurs…) and the airs
(pterodactyls, pteranodons…) ; whereas timidly appears a whole small people of mammals
and birds with teeth. But at the end of this era, all the big reptiles referred to above died out.
Of this huge group which had colonized all the environments, had adapted to the various
diets, it remains today only thin vestiges: some genera of lizards, snakes, crocodiles and
tortoises.At the tertiary era, birds and mammals, in full expansion, with a large multiplicity of
shapes, sizes and diets, take over (let us remind that they have the privilege to have a
constant temperature). The birds, from now on toothless, prevail in the airs, the mammals
occupy the places left vacant by the big reptiles, as well on the continents (for the most part
of species) as in the seas (cetaceans, seals).Thus the groups take turns. Each one beginning
with a timid entry through a little number of archaic shapes, expands very much at its time,
35
predominates by the number, the geographical dispersion, the variety but also the size often;
and after a height undergoes a decline by extinction of a more or less large number of types.
CONCLUSION.
THE TREE OF LIFE (THE BUSH OF LIFE) AND THE RAZOR OF OCKHAM.
The Jewish ultra-orthodox movements consider, of course, that their Torah is to be taken
literally.In Islamic land (Dar al Islam), it is the Quran which is regarded as a scientific book.
The creationist arguments are even become again popular in it thanks to the action of the
Turkish Movement Nurcu and of the preacher named Harun Yahya (Turkey Indonesia
Malaysia).
The hypothesis known as “of the Great-Spirit” working in the universe is also to handle with
precautions. It is, of course, very far from the Judaeo-Islamic-Christian creationism, but it
does not respect either another scientific principle, that of Ockham's razor, because it has
recourse to an additional entity to explain a phenomenon, without it is bringing additional
light. The hypothesis of this intelligent design, moreover, does not provide an explanation for
the manifest anomalies of nature: the blind spot in the human eye (and more generally of
vertebrates), extra-uterine pregnancy, panda inch, etc. The idea that a creating/organizing
principle is at work in the universe remains nevertheless a scientifically open question as the
life and the work of the (almost) neo-druid Teilhard de Chardin proves it.
**When we see the reactions of certain intellectuals, journalists, men of God or politickers, we
may wonder besides if the same thing does not exist in the human intelligence, or in what
acts as.
All thus depends in fact on what is “really,” initial raw material, ontologically speaking.
However, in this field the questions are still more numerous. Quantum mechanics particularly
reveal a world compatible with the great spiritual inspirations, notably druidic, through some
influences which seem to transcend the space-time. The physicist Bernard d’Espagnat sees
there the revelation implicitly of a “veiled reality,” because we reach only appearances.
There was nevertheless a very fine-tuning at the beginning of the formation of the universe,
Trinh Xuan Thuan explains. The universe is ruled by circa fifteen constants; if you change so
much is little, the things, the stars are not formed, and, since we are all “star dust,” life cannot
appear, because it needs the complexity of the heavy elements formed in stars. Nobody
discusses this fact. For example, the initial density of the universe is regulated by a factor
more or less 10-60. We can compare this precision to that of an archer who would reach a
target of 1cm2 located at the other end of the universe, that is to say 14 billion light-year.
Hence the “anthropic principle,” i.e., the idea that the constants of the universe are precisely
regulated for the appearance of the life then of awareness.
Tautology! the atheistic neo-druids affirm. We are here, therefore it is quite necessary that
the universe is regulated in such a way that we exist, which does not imply the intervention of
a creating principle…
In any case, as we already have had the opportunity to say, for more details or accuracy see
the various scientific works on the subject which are the only ones to be authoritative in this
field, in what concerns us we do nothing but popularize these notions.
What is important for our readers is to well understand the notion of the tree of life, such as it
is illustrated in the book of Kells or on the Romance capitals of the cathedral of Chartres or of
the abbey of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire on the Continent; i.e., there was not direct creation by an
unspecified God or Demiurge of inanimate or living beings without any link the ones with the
others, but progressive appearance from an initial raw material of numerous shapes of life
and animal intelligence even of awareness.
And unless we understand all this in a very Chardinian * sense, very far from any direct and
limited in the way of the Christian or Muslim fundamentalists, creationism; what, of course, is
always possible; the world in which we live is not a harmonious Whole, such a Bitos or
Cosmos without disorder neither break, such a vast system striving for the same goal, nor a
fundamental Unit, because its components would be of one substance. We discover no
universal principle dominating plurality, apart from perhaps that one which Teilhard de
Chardin believed to detect in it, but on each level real innumerable unequal and free forces,
all competing between them and therefore establishing temporary hierarchies; nor one center
as absolute Frame of Reference or universal Determinant, but practically an infinite plurality of
self-centered powers, tending to greatest independence and causing order around them.
Polycentrisms and polymorphisms, i.e., pluralities, dispersion and differences, such is the
36
World, from microcosm to macrocosm. It is necessary to have the poetic and visionary
sensitivity of a Teilhard de Chardin to guess something other in it.
Since the origin of life on earth, the evolution of the first living shapes towards an increased
complexification is a true succession of bursts leading to a multitude of various types of
different levels. So much so that we count more than sixteen billion species appeared
already, of which remains today only a number reduced to approximately a billion six hundred
and thousands.These repeated bursts were inevitably creators of gaps and gradations, and
initiators of lineages, transitorily parallel with others, generally divergent, some being
subdivided at a later stage, in sub-lineages of descent splitting in turn. Any evolution splits
and multiplies. It makes the living heterogenous by its unforeseen disjunctions.
The genetic evolution having led to Man is characterized by a whole succession of “stages
“corresponding to such or such innovation. The compared genetics highlighted 8 great
chromosomal changes having led to human speciation.One of them is the translocation of
chromosome 2.The Primates, since the Lemurs to the Anthropoids (Gorillas, Orangutans,
Chimpanzees and Gibbons) and even to the Man, have mainly the same chromosomal
components.The number of chromosomes pairs ranges from 32 in certain lemurs like the
microcebe, to 23 in the Man (the Cercopithecus being a case perceptibly special).Evolution
went in the direction of a reduction of the number of chromosomes. In the case of Man, we
passed from 48 chromosomes to 46.The number of speciation or chromosomal changes
making any crossbreeding impossible, separating chimpanzees from man, is probably 8.
Since the common ancestor, 25 million years ago, there were eight changes, of which each
one made it possible to isolate the gene pool of mankind.
* Of Teilhard de Chardin.
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TRUE ORIGINS OF THE GENUS HOMO.
Sorry for those who try at all costs to find some value to the Sumerian old hats (the story of
Eve and Adam) the rational minds of today do not reason in terms of primary couple, but in
terms of original population. Even it was only a few tens of individuals. Current science has
nothing to do with this notion of primordial human couple, it reasons in terms of groups, even
reduced.Contrary to the biblical myth of Eve and Adam, it is almost certain now that these
changes having given birth to Man needed, to succeed, more than two persons.In the
zoological sense of the word, a species is a population isolated from the others by the faculty
of its members to procreate between them, and the impossibility which they have to produce
fertile descendants through hybrid crossings with other species. It is therefore defined by
sexuality, like a potential community of procreation of fertile beings. In the case of the
ancestors of the Man, we are therefore brought, to consider a certain number of successive
species. Born from small family groups of individuals who, each time, undergo and fix a
chromosomal change, isolates themselves geographically or ecologically from the mother
population, and then evolves very quickly because of their weak number. The pre-human
history would have thus passed by a series of genetic bottlenecks made up each time of
some individuals. These changes being rare, they could not, each one, to appear that only
once, and in the state “heterozygous” in other words in an individual who had a mutant
chromosome and a normal chromosome. Such individuals were to have a very disturbed
meiosis as well as a much reduced fertility, but they could, in turn, to generate new
heterozygotes. So that “homozygous“ individuals having the mutation in double specimens,
appear, it was necessary that two heterozygotes procreate between them.On the other hand,
the first homozygotes, having a normal meiosis, also had a normal fertility, producing some
heterozygotes in their crossbreeding with non-mutants and some homozygotes in their
crossbreeding between them. Considering the low fertility of heterozygotes, the two
populations of mutant and non-mutant homozygotes found themselves thus practically
isolated in two different species, one made up of non-mutants and the other, being born, of
some mutant homozygotes. The meetings of couples of heterozygotes then of homozygotes
for the chromosomal mutations which create the new species, required a certain number of
consanguineous unions during the formation of each new species. On this point the Bible is
therefore right: incest is fundamental or consubstantial to mankind.Consequently there was
blood relationship, or perhaps incest, between their founders: a dominant male undergoes a
chromosomal mutation. He fertilizes females. These females have daughters. A certain
number of these daughters are then in turn fertilized by the dominant male having mutated.
Or then: a female undergoes a chromosomal mutation. She gives birth to several children of
whom some fertilize her in their turn, or fertilize themselves mutually.Etc. Etc. See numerous
other hypotheses.
At all events, which is certain, it is that all current men come from these incests and of this
“primordial family or clan.” In addition, the fact that the new species were far from being
numerous at the beginning, made possible their quick evolution, by founder effect and genetic
drift. This undoubtedly facilitated their ecological separation and their genetic insulation from
the mother population, in whom then they always risked being diluted or disappear, as long as
hybridization remained fertile between the two populations. In other words, there was
separation, insulation, therefore evolution.AND THIS DISCRIMINATION LITERALLY
FOUNDED MANKIND. DISCRIMINATION BETWEEN MUTANTS AND NON-MUTANTS IS
AT THE VERY ORIGIN OF MANKIND. THIS DISCRIMINATION WAS SYNONYMOUS WITH
LIFE OR WITH NEW START IN THE LIFE FOR IT. AT THE ORIGIN OF ALL THEREFORE A
CLAN! AND NOT A COUPLE! NEITHER MONOPHYLETIC DOGMA NOR POLYPHYLETIC
DOGMA BUT A PRIMORDIAL CLAN!
To want at all costs an initial human couple is therefore to pose the problem badly. The
lighting thus projected in the past of mankind has of course (one understands that easily)
deeply disturbed the (dogmatic) revealed religions in this field (Judaism, Christianity and
Islam), but, on the other hand, it has been compatible with Druidism. By definition, is it
necessary to remind it, the druidecht is linked to Science, therefore attentive to its progress.
One of the gains of the interface, between human Paleontology and Genetics, seems already
to confirm the reducing of the dispute between supporters of the monophyletic dogma (true or
38
false anti-racists) and supporters of the polyphyletic dogma (true or false racists) to the
identification of a non-problem.
- For the monophyletic dogma as we saw, all the men come from the same stock and for most
radical of them (Torah Bible and Quran) more precisely from a single original couple.
- For the polyphyletic dogma, the current men come from several different stocks or couples.
But if they are classifiable in “races” they belong nevertheless to the same “species” including
the Flores men or the Neanderthals. N.B. The criteria of the species are the inter fertility of
mixed couples, as well as in the fertility of the children resulting from these unions: therefore a
question of chromosomal compatibility.
The ancient druidism itself believed in a kind of primordial clan. It is never mentioned in it an
original single couple in the Celtic fashion (Viros etic Bena) somewhat similar to the Adam
and Eve of the Hebraic Genesis.In Ireland it is always spoken in it on the contrary of
successive peopling through “conquests,” some conquests done by groups, composed of
men and women, even in the case of an obvious imbalance between sexes. And with often
some survivors on the side of overcome people. For example, the Fir Bolg Gauls (sic) in the
west of Ireland.
As for the Celts of the Continent too, they were even more radical. The men for them did not
come from a primordial couple, from a Viros etic Bena of Celtic type, nor from the Earth, at
least by a generation of the first level, but from a crowd of different divine ancestors: the
teutates, some tribal god-or-demons, possibly totemic and animal, guardian of the tribe. The
human beings are therefore at the beginning, of course, some grandchildren of Mother-Earth,
but especially some children of their terroir (like the great coffees or the unpretentious little
wines) and they form communities as different from each other as are their respective small
homelands (pagus or county). Nevertheless there is a possibility of inter fertility, the high
knowers of the druidiaction were not stupid to the extent they were unaware of the thing. And
they affirmed moreover “that a portion of the people was really indigenous to the soil, but that
other inhabitants poured in from very remote islands on the coast, and from the districts
across the Rhine, having been driven from their former abodes by frequent wars, and
sometimes by inroads of a tempestuous sea” (Timagenes, quoted by Ammianus Marcellinus,
book XV, chapter IX, paragraph 4).Therefore, grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the
Earth, but born from the land gods or goddesses of the place, symbolically speaking, but also
including in their bosom, like flowing in their veins, quite a lot of elements come from
elsewhere! A position of the ancient high knowers far from being as simplistic as that of the
Bible or of the Quran taken literally therefore! A mixture of poetry of life and of common
sense!
Caesar simplifies therefore nevertheless somewhat, in his De Bello Gallico, while declaring
that all the Celts believed they came from Dis Pater (=Touta-tis ater? Touta-dis Ater ? In
continental old Celtic)In fact, all this is a non-problem, a little similar to that of the full half or
empty half bottle.All depends on the point of view at which one places oneself.To believe that
the current men come without problems from only one primordial couple is an abusive
simplification.To believe conversely that the various populations they form have no common
point, or that an abyss separates them, is an aberration. Reality is that there is quite a
common trunk to this life’s tree, but that to find it, it is necessary to go back far in time.The
first separations being produced at least two million years ago with the spreading of Homo
Habilis on Earth.
Contrary to what the supporters of a literal and simplistic interpretation of the Bible as well of
the Quran affirm, with their dogma of Sumerian origin of a direct creation or of a direct forgery
of Man, by one or more gods (elohim) so that he serves the Divine one: so that he offers
sacrifices to it so that he worships it, and obeys it (that he loves it, or gives it , its love, the
Christians say; in a more hypocritical way than the others, in a more hypocritical way than
Sumerians in any case); it is quite obvious that, at the origin of current mankind, there was the
formation of several original human couples; more or less stable, whose one partner at least
was a mutant.
In any case a few Celts of this time would have admitted the idea to have the same
ancestors as an Iberian or than a Germanic one. Exception which confirms the rule: the
Aedui claimed to be brothers of the Romans.
What just shows the political lowness of the sycophants courting a monarch does not date
from the reign of Sarkozy first in this country. This President made two wars (Libya and Ivory
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Coast) only for personal reasons, internal reasons of electioneering (who can believe the
altruism and the sincerity of the man who wanted to hang to a butcher's hook - what a
reference! - one of his political rivals?) Even if it is necessary to admit, in the case of Libya,
that the bombing of the French airplanes at some point (Obama therefore was right to
authorize them) thus spared to Benghazi a fate comparable to that of Misurata (siege and
street battles within the framework of a civil war). This savage will to regain lost ground at all
costs in the polls even led him to support ex-Gaddafists like General Abdel Fattah Yunes
helped by Islamist ones. Thank you to the 53% of French who in 2002 voted for this Bush in
miniature. It is true that France had already in the past attacked Tripoli (in 1685), but is not
Louis XIV who wants to be such (despite all his faults at least he was a great king -see his
last speeches- the king having legitimately ruled over my ancestors however).
As the ancient high knowers had already suspected (Book of Kells and Roman capitals in the
cathedral of Chartres or in the abbey of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire on the Continent) the human
lineage had a great development of its branches and grows out of the animal world about the
middle of the tertiary era; so that the “Men” of the Quaternary era are only the last leaves of a
huge tree of life.
As the ancient druids had had a presentiment of it, the first humans had “animal”
characteristics (of apes in fact and not of stags). And there is a whole series of transitions
between animal (gibbon, orangutan, chimpanzee, and gorilla) and current man; divergent
transitions making possible to go back to a “tertiary” common ancestor. In fact, a complex
family tree, reflecting a “bush-like evolution“: “a bush crammed with dead branches “.
The first classifiers hesitated about the place to reserve for Mankind in their systems.Von
Linné placed gibbon and man in the same genus: genus Homo. Everyone currently admits,
except a few Judaeo-Islamic-Christian, narrow-minded, outdated, creationists, that Man and
ape belong to the same order: that of primates.
To say that gibbon and man belong to the same genus, mean that they have a common close
relative: they are species cousins, appreciably distant it is true.It is easily imagined that such
a notion, although logically meant in the transformist idea, had some difficulty to become
established (it explains the reticence to evolutionism).When we seek the true reason for this
obtuse to the worst bad faith, resistance, we find it in a religious reason. The Religions of the
Book (of one book, Bible or Quran, and not of twelve like the Fenians in Ireland) held on
tightly to the myth of the Genesis according to the Torah, saw pushed back to more than one
million years the “creation” of the Man that their dogmas situate around - 5.000. Christianity
particularly feared the reappraisal of the dogma of the “mystery” of Redemption, this notion of
life’s tree being incompatible with the dogma of a first single couple guilty of one “original sin.”
The creationists therefore caricatured the thesis and the person of Darwin, the principal
theorist of evolutionism after Lamarck. By affirming for example that he claimed that Man
comes from the ape, whereas transformism spoke only about one stock common to the ones
and the others.The apologists used all available means, for instance by drawing arguments
from the scandal of the “Piltdown skull” to question it [Editor’s note. Such processes still
currently exist, particularly in order to disqualify “political” adversaries. Unfair or truncated
quotations, out of context, etc.].
! ---------------- ------------------------------------- !
Buffon, in 1749, still gave 8.000 years to the current man. The first fossil of “ape” was found
circa 1830 by the French Edward Lartet, piece of evidence finally of the possible remote origin
of Mankind. Discovering, thanks to a farmer, the paleontological site of Sansan, he undertook
in it excavations, in 1834. His main discoveries, the mandible of a mastodon (only word
which existed at the time to indicate the big prehistoric animals) and a fossil ape (the
Pliopithecus). After Sansan, Edward Lartet dug caves in the Pyrenees (Baudean -
Espelugues), in Aveyron and Haute-Garonne (Aurignac), in Ariege (Massat) and especially in
40
Perigord (cave of the Madeleine); where he discovered a mammoth engraved in ivory,
evidence of the contemporaneity of men and prehistoric animals. What challenged the date of
the appearance of Man on Earth and made it go back in time.Then he published, with his
friend, Henry Christy who had accompanied him in his explorations and had financially
helped him, an important study entitled “Repliquae Aquitanicae “.All this network of
presumptions leads to Charles Darwin (1859), who confirmed the fact that man is not a divine
creation as the Sumerian myths taken over by the Bible and the Quran have it, but the result
of an “animal” evolution which has laws. Since the discoveries of fossils follow one
another.Editor’s note. Darwin believed that between us and chimpanzee there was a missing
link, but we know today that it is not. The ape is the contemporary of the Man, what means
that there is not a “missing link” between it and us. Each species occupies today some distinct
branches which, like two parallel lines, will never meet in the future. In fact, paleontologists
well observed that his family tree was incomplete, but this missing link is not located at the
level of the branches man/ape which diverged, it is located in our common ascent.
We belong to the order of the primates, to the class of mammals which existed before the
extinction of the dinosaurs, 65 million years ago. They were still small modest creatures, living
under ground or in the trees, but destined for a bright future.
To what animal does the order of primates to which we belong goes back? Who are our
ancestors? We will describe in the few following pages the various animal species that gave
birth to mankind.Our immediate ancestors are the lemurs we find today on the island of
Madagascar, the lorises of the Indian peninsula and the tarsier adapted to the arboreal life. All
three are characterized by a short facies, a frontal vision and prehensile legs, whereas until
now the vision was lateral and fingers not yet separate.
As we could see, particularly with the Fayum Basin (sediment rich in fossils of mammals, in
Egypt) 40 million years ago two small primates lived here, the apidium, ancestor of
oreopithecus, and the parapithecus, which could mark the origin of the human branch; the
break point from the ancestors of the ape.For some authors, the separation of the
anthropoid and human branches indeed would have happened at the end of Oligocene
( there are more than thirty million years).
In the Fayum sediments was collected in 1966 a fossil, the Aegyptopithecus, of which some
specialists tend to make the first link of the anthropomorphic branch; still not very distinct from
the Parapithecus held for the last link of the common stock.
Very hairy, arboreal, Aegyptopithecus had a long muzzle, moved with four legs and retaining
itself to branches thanks to a long prehensile tail. This animal weighed approximately 4 kg
and resembled a lemur. Its brain was 27 cm3 and for the first time a placental animal had 32
teeth.It lived in Egypt in the era of lower Miocene; there are 33 to 35 million years. At that time
Earth had an aspect completely different of today. The current world hardly emerged from the
water, the old continent was only an outline and the African continent was still an island
surrounded by Tethys. Living in an equatorial climate, its habitat consisted of luxuriant forests
in which a very much diversified fauna lived.
End of the Oligocene beginning of Miocene (25 million years ago) in Kenya and in Uganda,
Egyptopithecus is changed into Proconsul. The name of Proconsul (“Before the consul“)
would have been chosen by his discoverer, Arthur Tindell Hopwood, by reference to an
erudite chimpanzee of the 1930s in London. The proconsuls had already characteristics
specific to hominids, therefore they are counted among the first known members of this
superfamily. They had no longer tail, the volume of their brain was relatively large (compared
with that of gibbons) and they had long arms. Being arboreal, they were to move while
walking on the branches without suspending themselves to those. Their teeth let suppose that
they ate primarily fruits, but they probably supplemented their food while eating small animals.
The exact position of the proconsul genus in the family tree of primates is discussed.
Formerly, it was regarded as an ancestor of the current anthropoids; today, one rather sees in
it a parallel branch, even if some authors continue to regard it as a “missing link,” one of the
ancestors common to men and the current great apes.
Four distinct species were defined. They are clearly characterized by the size.
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- Proconsul Africanus did not have a tail and moved in the trees using its four members. Its
weight is estimated 18 kg. He lived in the wet altitude forests.
- Proconsul Heseloni resembled Proconsul Africanus and some authors regard it as a variant
of the same species. It lived in the clear forests with undergrowth made of bushes.
- Proconsul Nyanzae had the same type of habitat, but it was much taller, with a weight
estimated 28 kg, and had a muzzle more lengthened than the other species.
- Proconsul Major was tallest, with a weight ranging from 50 kg to 75 kg. It lived in the wet
altitude forests like Proconsul Africanus. The fossils ascribed to this species are sometimes
classified within the Dryopithecus genus.
The Kenyapithecus or Ramapithecus appears in Africa approximately 20 million years
ago.We will find remains of them in Africa, Asia and Europe where it will survive still 13 million
years later at the dawn of the reign of Australopithecus (6 500.000 years). This fertile group
would have got an occasional bipedalism around - 14 million years, i.e., in Miocene. At the
same time various other species lived, of which the gigantopithecus (some specialists think
that there still remains in Himalaya where it would be known as yeti).Kenyapithecus or
Ramapithecus was the first primate to use a tool. The excavations of Fort-Ternan, in Kenya,
in which bones were found, revealed stones dated back to 14 million years, which were used
without preparation. i.e., of which natural edges present signs of wear or crushing. Beside
them bones of animals showing marks of impacts were also found.This occasional bipedalism
of Kenyapithecus or Ramapithecus will tend to become permanent because of the evolution
of its environment in Miocene. The climate will undergo variations; long periods of drought will
make the forest go back. Savanna consequently will appear with its open spaces where the
hominid will be vulnerable. He will have “to think with his head” in order to survive. He will
remain “supple and adaptable,” not because of his physique, but because of his “intellectual”
faculties of adaptation.This Kenyapithecus or Ramapithecus, a link seeming essential in our
history, will remain up to 7.000.000 years before our Common Era.
Toumai. - Seven-million-year - six million years. Toumai (sahelanthropus tchadensis) was
discovered in 2001, by a Chadian team. Nearly complete skull, a fragment of the lower jaw
and three teeth, the whole belonging to five different individuals. It would be the
representative of the common ancestor man/ape. Its cranial capacity, circa 360-370 cm3, is
equivalent to that of the current chimpanzees. Its teeth, particularly its canines, small with
apical wear and without sharpening facets; the morphology of its premolars and molars with
tooth enamel thicker than in the chimpanzees, but less than in the Australopithecus; its
relatively flatter face and the base of its skull, with an occipital foramen in already very
anterior position as well as an occipital face very tilted towards the back; show that the
Chadian hominid belongs well to the human branch. And not to that of chimpanzees or
gorillas.
The discovery of the skull of “Toumai,” in Chad, 3.000 kilometers from the African east, had
forced the scientific community to refit the last fashionable theory on this subject. It will have
lasted twenty years, like the two great previous theories, which located the origin of human
lineage initially in Europe, then in Asia. There remains the fundamental hypothesis, according
to which the human characteristics appeared in the wake of big climatic crises.
Millenium ancestor. - Six million years.Millenium ancestor (Orrorin tugenensis) was unearthed
in 1999, in the Tugen hills, Kenya, 50 kilometers north of equator.Orrorin is of a small build,
still arboreal in order to escape predators; its humerus has a right lateral crest for the
brachioradialis muscle like the humerus of the chimpanzees of today have , and its phalanges
are curved as those of the Primates which climb; but its femur has a head massive, spherical,
broader than the neck, a cortical bone stronger in its lower part, a great trochanter minor, a
short intertrochanteric line, a linea aspera broad and low for powerful the gluteal muscles (of
buttocks). As many characteristics linked to a frequent bipedalism. Lastly, its teeth are with
thick enamel, like those of all the Australopithecus, but they are small and square, therefore,
in this way, much more human than those, massive, of the latter.
The study of the femur of Orrorin, thanks to a technique of computer-assisted tomography,
made it possible to establish its bipedalism.Its first phalanx, long and curved, indicates,
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however, that Orrorin sometimes hanged from the trees. It was thus also arboreal. The size of
its molars (identical to that of the current men) is, however, littler than that of
Australopithecus. In short, Orrorin seems to have picked off some characteristics in apes and
in hominids!
Millenium ancestor easily outclasses all the fossil “men” discovered in number during the last
decades.
But in fact what it has more? First its old age: six million years. It is almost three million years
more than Lucy, the small Australopithecus, discovered in Ethiopian Afar, in 1974.It is also 1,
5 million years more as Ramidus the Ethiopian, presented, not long ago, as being our
ancestor, before the researchers realize that its characteristic features were more ape-like
than human.
Six million years, it is above all a date very close to that of the separation of apes and future
men, estimated at seven or eight million years.
A dozen bones prove that Millenium and its tribe scampered along the wooded savanna of
the time, sharing their East-African territory with the ancestors of antelopes, of rhinoceroses
or of hippopotamuses. After the discovery by the Kenyan Evalyne Kiptalam, of a first phalanx,
the finds did not cease following one another. Two fragments of mandibles, three femurs, a
humerus, a handful of isolated teeth, were thus revealed on three different sites, by a
researcher’s team of the Community Museum in Kenya. The ravines of the district of Baringo,
250 kilometers in the North-West of Nairobi, thus delivered the remains of at least five
individuals, males and females. The whole, in deposits clearly dated back to six million years
by two different teams. Such labor fruits are unexpected … even for this East-African area, of
which the rocks rich in carbonates and phosphates of calcium - favorable conditions to
fossilization - make paleontologists happy… Bipedal, Millenium ancestor, however, had
preserved arboreal habits… If it did not sway from branches in branches, like our cousins the
apes, it had its habits in them. This way of life will continue besides among Australopithecus
like Lucy, circa - three million years. Many paleontologists think even that it is while using the
climbing of the trees that our ancestors got a well straightened up trunk and back, essential to
the practice of bipedalism. But it is still the jaw of Millenium ancestor which is more speaking:
its teeth clearly associate it with the human lineage. Their thick enamel makes one think this
primate was already an omnivorous animal, probably fond of fruits with hard peel, which could
occasionally add a little meat to its diet. The canines are smaller than those of an ape, but
larger than those of the man today. Its third upper molar is also much shortened, which
suggests that its face was already flattened and that it was not endowed with a muzzle
lengthened like apes.
What to conclude from this first evolution towards human lineage? A first stage is the
disconnection, from the ancestral “stock “of prosimians, but the land way of life which
accompanies it probably implies a divergent evolution of the skeleton compared to what
occurred in the lineages leading to current pongidae.
Separation between men and apes happened in fact, there are approximately seven or eight
million years, elsewhere in Africa. At least, it is what is currently supposed, because no
skeleton of the ape-man of the time was still discovered.
The Ramapithecus or Kenyapithecus, the oldest admitted hominids, were, of course, to live in
groups, which ensured a better safety to them. The absence of natural means of defense like
the canines makes one think that they had already probably got the bipedal station, at least
occasional, for the race or the fight. The latter could imply stone or branches throw away.The
structure in groups must also include a communication system made of gestures and sounds.
Separation between apes and human dates back to at least eight million years and was not
performed suddenly, but by successive steps. The most usually put forward assumption
today, to explain the later appearance of bipedalism and therefore of man; is that of the
prerequisite passage from the life in forest to the life in savanna (more or less wooded)
approximately eight million years ago. The birth of the Rift Valley in East Africa, on more than
3.000 kilometers, from north to the south, would have separated in two groups completely
distinct our ancestors of the time.In the west forest as well as humidity would have given pre-
chimpanzees but also pre-gorillas, in the east savanna and drought would have produced the
pre-men, forced to adapt to this new life by becoming bipedal. The primary characteristic of
man, or more exactly of the pre-man indeed; it is bipedalism: the possibility of extending the
43
trunk, pelvis, thigh and leg, made it possible our ancestors to move on their rear limbs. This
new position released their hand, enabled the development of the brain and, logical result, the
invention of tools, the appearance of conscience as well as culture.
All that remains nevertheless quite hypothetical, because possible ancestors of Man were
also found elsewhere than in savanna.The question remains: how and why the "favorable to
walk genes” were selected to lead to Man.
AUSTRALOPITHECUS, approximately 4, 4 million years ago.
The first Australopithecus was discovered in Taung South Africa by Raymond Dart in
1924.The family of Australopithecus, “discovered” therefore by Raymond Dart at the
beginning of the 20th century, comprises several different species: Ramidus, Afarensis,
Africanus, Robustus, Aethiopicus, Boisei, etc. We enter there the protohistory of Man. It is
indeed with the Australopithecus that the first bone or stone industries appear, the first
arranged tools.
The Ramidus Australopithecus.Fifty fragments belonging to 17 different individuals were
discovered in 1993. Pieces of the cranial vault (primitive enough) and of children lower jaws,
arm bones, etc. And finally some teeth. The premolars and molars are smaller than those of
its successor, Australopithecus Afarensis, canines are bigger, and the dental enamel finer
(pieces of evidence that Ramidus therefore ate especially fruits and leaves).
AND ABOVE ALL, ABOVE ALL, Ramidus had a first molar “deciduous” i.e., intended to fall
out, a little as in the chimpanzee. The shape of elbows shows us in any case that it was
already no longer completely an ape.The medium size of these first Australopithecus was to
be rather small (1 m ?) but it is not certain. We do not know neither with certainty if they
walked already upright; it is only the most probable hypothesis. The final bipedalism dates
back consequently to at least four million years.These Australopithecus lived close to Aramis,
230 km North-East of Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia.Considering the context of the discovery (600
pieces of other animals), it is to be supposed that the 17 unlucky ones in question had to be
devoured. There at the time a floodplain, wooded, without particular relief, was to stretch.
There were apes and antelopes, rhinoceroses and primitive elephants, birds, bats and other
rodents… And also, strangely, some tall bears.Ramidus sleeps in nests of branches and
nibbles the foliage most of the day.The main activity of ramidus is indeed to seek to eat.
These first Australopithecus gather fruits and berries, dig up roots, catch bird eggs, and even
some insects.As he doesn't yet make tools, ramidus breaks nuts or snails with stones.See
also Anamensis Australopithecus who lived, four million years ago in Kenya.His jaw is still
very archaic, very prognathous, but his legs make him the best bipedal of all the
Australopithecus.
The first conclusion of all that is therefore clear. 3, 5 million years ago, even before, pre-
humans had a range much larger than African East. Matching a halo of wooded areas or
savannas girdling the dense forest, from the Atlantic Ocean to the area of the Cape of Good
Hope, through Central Africa and Eastern Africa.
A jaw fragment discovered on January 23, 1995, in the area of Koro Toro, in the middle of
Chad, 2.500 kilometers from the Rift Valley, proves that pre-hominids contemporary of Lucy
undoubtedly lived in Central and Western Africa. Very far from the zone where they were
believed confined.The “owner” of the piece of mandible baptized Abel by his discoverers (in
honor of their colleague Abel Brillanceau) is an Australopithecus 3 to 3, 5 million years old.
The study of the animal bones which were nearby shows that his living environment matches
to the environments of a lake’s shore. With rivers and a mosaic of landscapes ranging from
the gallery forest to wooded savanna, with more open spaces: meadows with grass.The
discovery place (today desert) kept besides the pretty name of Bahr el Ghazal, “river of
gazelles “(in Arabic).The Ethiopian brothers of Abel, the Australopithecus in the west,
developed, at the time, in the same type of environment.Abel resembled them probably much.
The fragment of the mandible and its seven teeth are very similar to those of Australopithecus
afarensis, but also show some differences.The geographical dispersion of Australopithecus
seems to have been so fast that the problem of the precise original place of Mankind
becomes a question which will undoubtedly remain without a true answer. And in reality we
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know no longer very well in fact from which species of Australopithecus is resulting Homo
Habilis, first link of the family of hominids. The bipedalism of the famous Lucy was, for
instance, far from being perfect.
The Man of Lucy.The name given to the skeleton (in fact 52 bones of the same skeleton) of
Australopithecus afarensis discovered in 1974, in the east of Africa. The most complete
skeleton to date discovered.Lucy is indeed the very type of Australopithecus of this second
time, the Australopithecus afarensis.The word afarensis alludes to the area of its discovery,
the country of Afar people, as in the case of Ramidus (besides far 75 km only from the place
where he was discovered).The small Lucy was twenty years old, 3, 5 million years ago.Lucy
lived indeed in the forests bordering the Awash River in Ethiopia. The volume of her brain was
still modest. With its 340 cm3, it resembled rather that of a small chimpanzee. This small
female (approximately one meter high, for 25 kg to 30 kg) was indeed bipedal. Her pelvis,
different from that of chimpanzees, for instance, proves that she stood, but the joints and the
size of her members show that she also still climbed the trees like apes.The study of the
bones of her skeleton showed that Lucy walked upright on her two legs, but with difficulty. In
Tanzania the Laetoli footprints, fossilized in a volcanic ash dating back to 3,7 million years,
showed that three Australopithecus, crossed here, walking upright, side by side. Probably the
same species as Lucy.They were to look a little drunk… with a unsteady, not very aligned,
step, due to the fact that they made swivel their trunk and their hips to each step.With Lucy
the appearance of Man is therefore confirmed on Earth, the appearance of the first hominid
worthy of this appellation.
CONCLUSION ON AUSTRALOPITHECUS.
The Australopithecus lived in very diverse environments; forests, savannas...Some are
massive (aethiopicus, robustus, boisei) and the other more gracile (africanus) or more
primitive.The first are identifiable by their jutting out face, their bulky supraorbital torus above
the eyes, their flattened forehead and their sagittal crest very marked on the top of the skull,
among males. The molars and the premolars are very large, the canines and the incisors are
much smaller: they were to crush hard food, like roots or seeds. The second ones, on the
other hand, have a less massive face, a torus little marked above the eyes, and a slightly
straightened forehead.The development of the incisors and of the canines makes scientists
suppose that they ate meat.As for the third type, the type Afarensis, it still seems very close to
Ramapithecus.The robust Australopithecus is stronger and taller than the other hominids. Of
a weight ranging from 40 kg to 60 kg, he was 1, 50 m tall. Cranial capacity: 500 cm3. He
seems to be a vegetarian frozen in its choice and without appreciable evolution, what will lead
to his disappearance.The gracile Australopithecus. Scientists his height at approximately 1,
25 m and his weight to 20 kg or 30 kg. Cranial capacity: 450 cm3.He has a powerful
masticator system, but his diet mode will change gradually to become increasingly
omnivorous.The gracile Australopithecus indeed seems to have added, at least occasionally,
some meat, to his diet. He was a hunter of small preys (rodents, for example); what did not, of
course, prevent him from cutting up occasionally some animals found dead. It is him which is
best placed in the family tree to give birth to more advanced hominids. Ramapithecus, a few
million years before, used perhaps already fragments of basalt, but did not make tools yet.If
the first tools were invented by Australopithecus, it seems well therefore that it is not by the
variety known as “robust“. Considering the conditions of the time, the survival of the group
was a perpetual struggle. Food deficiencies and malnutrition were the rule, as the study of
teeth (hypoplasia or thinning of enamel) proves it. These first hominids had a childhood
ending when they were about seven or eight years and a life expectancy ranging
approximately from thirty to forty years, like chimpanzees.The robust Australopithecus died
out approximately three million years ago.Hunger and disease therefore undoubtedly ended
up overcoming Men of Lucy (the Australopithecus) whose gracile type had to gradually make
the way towards the first true Man, Homo Habilis, to whom he gave birth according to any
probability.It is an assumption with an all-Darwinian cruelty, but we should not over-estimate
the importance of these conflicts. If the primitive hominids were sometimes in competition, the
fights, of course, did not have the scale which some people liked to give them, sometimes.It
doesn't seem to have been true wars between them, because they lived in different ecological
environments.
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GENUS HOMO.
The following human conquest will still take place in Africa and it will be the fact of Homo
Habilis or Rudolfensis, there is more than two million years.The word homo instead of
Australopithecus is there to show that they are well men this time, and no longer advanced
apes.Homo rudolfensis is the name of a fossil species of bipedal hominids appeared
approximately 2, 4 million years ago. It owes its specific name to the Lake Rudolf, old name of
Lake Turkana. He belongs to the human lineage and more precisely to the genus Homo
therefore, to which Homo sapiens also belongs. Homo rudolfensis is, with Homo habilis, the
first representative of the genus Homo.Fossils of Homo rudolfensis were found in Tanzania
(Olduvai site), in Kenya (Koobi Fora site) and in Ethiopia (Omo site).The cranial capacity of
Homo rudolfensis is 750 cm3 on average. It is therefore comparable, even higher than that of
Homo habilis. Homo rudolfensis was approximately 1, 60 m tall for a weight of about 50 kg.
He was endowed with a thick cranial vault and had large incisors. The shape of the squama
of his temporal bone was high and round.Specialists generally consider that Homo
rudolfensis disappeared; there is approximately 1, 6 million years. Consequently, he lived a
certain time together Homo habilis, Australopithecus, Homo ergaster and Homo erectus, the
first representative of the genus Homo, having left the African cradle. This living together of
various species proves that the evolution of the human lineage is bush-like and nonlinear.The
word “habilis” alludes to the ability of this homo to cut stone or to build wooden shelters that
he arranges gradually. Three million years ago indeed, a new climatic upheaval (a new more
important drying up) will give birth to an entire hominian bush-shaped growing.
Homo habilis (1, 40 m 50 kg) goes near the modern shapes of genus homo. His endocranial
capacity very markedly higher than that of his predecessors, ranges from 500 cm3 to 800
cm3. He behaves, with respect to the gracile Australopithecus, like a progressive descendant
moving definitively towards the getting of perfect bipedalism, establishment of the omnivorous
diet and explosive growth of his brain. The development of his brain and the widening of his
omnivorous diet, his adaptation to the biotope, lead him to set up the first elements of a social
structure: small communities, dwellings, gathering, hunting, first tools, etc.It is a primate of
open savannas whose defense was the intelligence. He does not run very well and bites
badly, but he develops the tool that helps him to eat but also not to be eaten.Homo habilis is
the first hominid incontestably already Man since able to cut stones, and with him besides we
enter Paleolithic age. In other words, the Paleolithic, since Homo Habilis also shows a more
advanced civilization. He compensates for his handicaps (a still hesitant walk on two legs) by
the creation of tools or of weapons unceasingly more sophisticated: shaped pebbles,
hammers (hammerstone) and knives or choppers, out of flint or of more ordinary stone.Did
they also have already a language? This is another question, very difficult.Remains of homo
habilis are found in the islands of the South-East Asia, particularly in Indonesia, in Sangiran
(some fragments of two different brain-pans) and in Mojokerto (a piece of the top of the skull
of a child, discovered in 1936). These human remains are almost two million years old,
according to Gariss Curtis (between 1, 9 and 1, 6 million years very exactly). The recent
dating of a fragment of an old mandible 1, 9 million years old on the site of Longgupo in
China, confirms these discoveries. This last fossil was found beside stone tools. It is in this
case a rather primitive form of Homo Erectus, because still having Homo Habilis
characteristics.In any case, that proves that Homo Habilis left his cradle, East Africa, to go to
the conquest of the world, there is probably more than 2 million years (2, 5 million?)The site of
Chilhac (French department of the Haute-Loire) does not have, perhaps, the 1, 8 million years
of age that P. Guth ascribes to it, but it is certain that quartz industry is old of a million years
at least in this area of the world.The presence at that time of fossils and tools in non-African
regions, therefore raises a problem.What is, for example, the connection between Olduvai
and Chilhac? Is it the fact of migrations? Or do we have to imagine a simultaneous
emergence of the human phenomenon on various points of the Earth? What the dating got in
Chilhac or in other Eurasian sediments could suggest.
The delay of Europe with respect to Africa would rather encourage imagining a long walk that
of peoples having used for it the long ditch of the rift. A branch would have left towards the
East. Another would have stopped in the Maghreb. A third would have reached Europe. The
invaders in question would have gone round the Mediterranean, unless we admit the
46
assumption of a crossing via an isthmus which, at the time, would have linked Tunisia, Sicily,
and Calabria.Did these movements of the human population really exist? Perhaps. But there
could also have evolution on the spot at a rate different of that of the migrations. We should
not neglect this possibility of the convergence of shapes without geographical connection.
Homo georgicus. 1, 8 million years.
All began in 1999, in Dmanissi in Georgia: some remains of hominids were discovered.
Research continued, providing more than thirty cranial remains. Initially, they were ascribed to
Homo ergaster. The height differences with the other species led the scientists to create a
new one: Homo georgicus, coming from Homo habilis and ancestor of Asian Homo
erectus.Because of his age, Homo georgicus would be therefore the known first hominid
having conquered Europe (therefore taking this place from Homo ergaster). His cranial
capacity ranged from 700cm3 to 800 cm3. Height: 1, 45 m. to 1, 55 m. Weight: 50 kg.
Localization: Eurasia. Fire: controlled. Tools: made.
Homo ergaster. From two to one million years.For some authors, Homo ergaster is the
precursor of Homo erectus. For others it is a species which developed separately… the
debate is not closed!Through his shape, Homo ergaster resembles much modern Man.His
cranial capacity is, however, smaller than ours, about 850 cm3.It is perhaps the first true
representative of the genus Homo: he does better than to use his environment (as a
chimpanzee would do it), he changes it.Homo ergaster leaves truly the world of trees, he
appropriates fire, and he invents the symmetrical biface.Moreover, it appears that he is the
first hominid to eat some meat regularly. Height: 1, 55 m. to 1, 70 m. Weight: 50 kg to 65 kg.
Localization: Africa (Kenya), Southern Europe. Habitat: savanna, plains.
PITHECANTHROPUS, THERE ARE 1, 5 MILLION YEARS. Called Homo Erectus by
scientists today.
The standing Man (Homo Erectus) was not born only in Africa since his ancestor Homo
Habilis probably let it there is more than two million years.This standing man is already able to
utter some words and he is also able to think. These “Standing” Men keep warm and protect
themselves against the animals while settling in caves: a corner to sleep, another to cut the
stones, another to cook. The women prepare the elephant or the roasted reindeer. The great
progress of the “Standing” men is indeed to have tamed fire. They learn how to light it and
maintain it. Their life becomes more pleasant: they warm themselves, have lighting, they
cook, and they also use it to move away wild beasts.Homo Erectus dominated nature and he
was already the super predator of the time. In addition to the size of his brain, two other
elements show that he was intelligent. First of all, he could make effective tools so much that
simulations indicated that his scrapers and other slicers were hardly less powerful than the
modern knives of our butchers. During a simulation done, a few years ago, two butchers were
asked to strip a carcass of all its pieces of meat, not with their usual steel knives, well
sharpened, but with the tools of Homo erectus. They get through their task, in only four times
more time than usually. Of course, they did not have the work method nor the dexterity of
their ancestors, but the work was accomplished, piece of evidence that the primitive stone
tools were sufficiently effective.Second observation, in hunting, Homo erectus could use the
force of the group to stalk the animals; and could therefore rival with the big wild animals
which hunted in pack like lions, leopards, saber-toothed tigers, hyenas or bears. These
various signs indicate that Homo erectus showed already a great intelligence, notwithstanding
the fact that he was strong and courageous. But his aptitudes did not save him from
extinction.
The evolution of Mankind is related to the climate which modified all the species biologically.
In parallel, the ancestor of Man also lived a geographical evolution.In his wandering course
over hill and dale, Homo erectus was the first to travel all over South Africa and East Africa.
Between a million and seven hundred thousand years, he went up towards tropical zones. His
descendants spread throughout the continents, crossing Africa and Eurasia to conquer new
47
hunting territories, hardly armed with bifaces and spears. We find Homo erectus from the
Tropics to the Far North, from Spain through Indonesia as far as China (750.000 years ago).
His population was already of several million individuals.It is Homo erectus who tamed fire.
He undoubtedly had to conquer this unusual “animal” very quickly. Some children or most
hardened and most curious hunters perhaps discovered it during a day of storm after a forest
fire.Fire was soon sign of power: the one who monopolized it became equal God-or-demons.
But for a long time, man feared that the flame of the hearth dies out, or that an enemy tribe
seize it. Finally, men managed to domesticate it. While controlling fire, Homo erectus gave
himself for the first time the means of controlling nature and changing his way of life. He could
henceforth to warm oneself, to undergo no longer the climate harshness; the fire of the flame
made possible to move wild animals away and heat made possible the cooking of the
products of their hunting, making thus easier to digest their food.When man did control fire?
For now, the only acceptable piece of evidence of the taming of fire is the discovery of
improved fireplace. Whereas the first stone tools date back to 2, 5 million years, the oldest
combustion structures (some fire-place) date back to approximately 450.000 years. The cave
of Menez-Dregan, in the French department of Finistere, delivered several hearths of which
oldest would date back to that time. In the deposit of Terra Amata (French department of
Alpes-Maritimes), several hearths (dating back to 380.000 years) were improved in small pits
or on pebble pavements.From 350.000 years before Common Era, the marks of
domestication of fire are increasingly convincing and numerous.The fossils of animals which
were discovered in the areas where Homo erectus lived could reach the size of elephants.
That suggests that the behavior of these hunters was already complex and of a great
effectiveness to attack such mammals. It is at that time during the evening gathering by the
fire that probably developed the communalism and all tribal rites. Man finally thought
forward.The evolution of Homo erectus was not completed yet. It is thus proven that the size
of the brain of the first representative fossils was not higher than that of the former hominids,
its volume oscillating from 750 cm3 to 800 cm3. A million years later, his cranial capacity
reached 1.100 cm3 to 1.300 cm3, as much as that of Homo sapiens which succeeded to
him.In spite of his bipedalism, his bulky brain, his tools, in short his adaptation to the
environment during more than one million years; what represents longevity ten times longer
than that of our species; the lineage of Homo erectus died out there is more than 250.000
years, in favor of Homo sapiens.
HOMO FLORESIENSIS.
Homo floresiensis lived on Indonesian islands: the island of Flores (and perhaps that of Java)
between approximately 95.000 and 12.000. He was about 1 m tall for 16 kilograms to 28
kilograms and stands up. His bipedalism is testified by the position of the occipital foramen, at
the base of the skull, to which the spinal column is connected. His main characteristic is the
small height, but also the reduced size of his brain. Indeed, this one would be even smaller
than that of the Australopithecus Lucy. The Man of Flores would have a cranial capacity less
than 400 cm3, that is to say a brain of the size of a grapefruit. But Homo floresiensis would
have been endowed with an evolved brain, presenting a frontal lobe, involved in the resolution
of problems, and a developed temporal lobe, what is important for all the mechanisms related
to memory. Homo floresiensis was obviously able to design tools. The presence on the site of
many tools out of black flint and volcanic rocks shows it. These instruments are mainly made
up of simple flakes but also include nuclei with marks of cutting up, carried so as to get some
bifaces. He hunted too, and controlled the use of fire. We can also note the osseous
differences below.
- Insertion of the femur more oblique than that of Homo sapiens.
- Pelvis broader than Homo sapiens.
- Cranium: nasal septum strengthened by an osseous structure (like the Australopithecus),
bone of the cranial vault thick, like in the genus Homo; but strengthened backwards (peculiar
characteristic); strong curve of the occipital bone (like Homo), weak prognathism, small
canines, supraorbital torus reduced and separated in two well-distinct parts.
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Homo floresiensis lived on Indonesian islands, the island of Flores (and perhaps also that of
Java) we have said. On the island, several current animal species also show a difference in
size with their fellow creatures. For example, the dragons of Komodo, which are a kind of
gigantic lizards. They are carnivorous and can be three meters long.But we also find remains
of animals beside Homo floresiensis, including a dwarf stegodon (disappeared species close
to the elephant) and a gigantic rat (papagomys). The theory of the insular evolution explains
evolutionary adaptations; when species are isolated on an island (an environment very limited
and in the absence of big predators): reduction of the size of the animals larger than a dog
and increase of the size of the smaller animals.It was therefore supposed that the Man of
Flores would be a descendant of Homo Habilis. This one would have arrived, approximately
800.000 years ago on the island, either by navigation, or while being let carried by floating
rubble. At that time the glaciation had lowered the sea level. When ice melted, the sea level
upwells again, preventing men from setting out of the island. But this assumption is
corroborated until now by no precise geological data (existence of a land bridge), since the
current sea depth seems to rule out any crossing on foot through the Wallace line. The first
specimen analyzed by Peter Brown (LB1 or Edu) is a woman approximately about thirty years
old, dating back to 18.000 years. It is the most complete skeleton found in the cave of Liang
Bua. A complete or almost and little distorted cranium. A mandible. A femur. A tibia. The left
part of the pelvis. Several other osseous fragments.Edu shows both modern characteristics
and not very evolved characteristics, it is what makes her classification so complex. One will
therefore differentiate the characteristics of sapiens or neanderthal type, from the
characteristics of Australopithecus type. The main characteristic is the cranium size, we can
compare with that of Homo sapiens. Edu had a brain of 380 cm3, that is to say less third of
that of our contemporaries, close to that of the chimpanzees and bonobos, lower than that of
gorillas. The relative size of the brain of Homo erectus varies between 865 cm3 and 1.039
cm3. The study made it possible to dismiss the assumptions according to which Homo
floresiensis would be a Pygmy or suffered from microcephaly. The discovery and the study of
a total of nine similar specimens, discovered in September 2004 (based on a jaw, two tibiae,
a shoulder blade, a femur, two radii, one ulna, a vertebra and phalanges of fingers and toes);
coming from the cave of Liang Bua; seem to confirm the fact that Homo floresiensis is indeed
a new species. Small size being due to the known phenomenon of insular dwarfism, an
hypothesis strengthened by the discovery of stegodon remains (kind of dwarf ancestor of our
elephant) on the island. These remains are 95.000 years to 12.000 years old, what makes
them contemporary of Homo sapiens. Nevertheless, it seems less and less probable that this
new species is directly related to the evolution of Homo erectus, and that consequently its
origins are much more distant. It remains to be seen if there were other Homo floresiensis in
the world.
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OUR ANCESTOR ? THE MAN OF NEANDERTHAL
(= THE TRIBE OF THE NEMED HORNUNNOS IN IRISH LEGENDS).
After the disappearance of Homo Erectus indeed, the Earth did not remain deserted, and the
Man of Atapuerca Mountains, a massif near Burgos (Archanthropus or Homo Antecessor?)
made his appearance and replaced him.One found indeed in the North of Spain, 36 fossilized
bones: fragments of craniums, teeth and jaws, probably belonging to four Hominids among
whom a child. These distant ancestors of the Tautavel Man were found beside primitive flint
tools. The dating of the site could ascribe them approximately 780.000 years.The cranium of
the Tautavel Man was discovered in 1971, in the French department of Eastern Pyrenees, the
cave (caune) of Arago, in Tautavel, close to Perpignan. The Man of Tautavel is a Homo
Erectus, but his cranial capacity (1 050 cm3) and different other characteristics , make him
already almost a Neanderthal.He lived, 450.000 years ago. He doesn't know fire apparently,
but he had nevertheless stoned the floor of his cave. With rather elementary weapons
(probably some wood spears) he hunted animals such panther, lion or bear. He also hunted
primitive musk ox or reindeer. Horse also seems to have belonged to his food resources. The
Tautavel Man also hunted, but for his fur this time, Etruscan wolf (canis etruscus).
A 2007 genetic study suggested some Neanderthals may have had red hair and blond hair,
along with a light skin tone. It was even suggested that 30 percent of Neanderthal DNA
placed end to end survived in modern humans, notably expressed in skin, hair and modern
diseases. The anthropologist Carleton Coon even claimed in 1939 that, well shaved, combed
and dressed, a Neanderthal would go unnoticed in the subway, of New York.
Neanderthal fossils were first discovered in 1829 in the Engis caves (the partial skull dubbed
Engis 2), in what is now Belgium by Philippe-Charles Schmerling and the Gibraltar 1 skull in
1848 in the Forbes's Quarry, Gibraltar, both prior to the type specimen discovery in a
limestone quarry (Feldhofer Cave), located in the valley of Neander or valley of the river
Dussel in Erkrath, Germany (about 12 km east of Dusseldorf), in August 1856, that is to say
three years before Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published.The type
specimen, dubbed Neanderthal 1, consisted of a skull cap, two femora, three bones of the
right arm, two of the left arm, parts of the left ilium, fragments of a scapula, and ribs. The
workers who recovered the bones originally thought them to be the remains of a cave bear.
However, they eventually gave the whole to amateur naturalist Johann Carl Fuhlrott, who
turned the fossils over to anatomist Hermann Schaaffhausen.
Neanderthals also Neanderthal Man, taxonomically Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis were archaic humans who lived in Eurasia during roughly 250,000 years to
40,000 years ago. They seem to have appeared in Europe and then expanded into
Southwest, Central and Northern Asia. They are known from numerous fossils, as well as
stone tools. Almost all of those younger than 160,000 years are of the so-called Mousterian
techno-complex, which is characterized by tools made out of stone flakes. The type specimen
is Neanderthal 1, found in Neander Valley in the German Rhineland, in 1856.
Compared to modern humans, Neanderthals were stockier, with shorter legs and a bigger
body. In conformance with Bergmann's rule, this likely was an adaptation to preserve heat in
cold climates. Male and female Neanderthals had cranial capacities averaging 1,600 cm3 and
1,300 cm3 , respectively, within the range of the values of anatomically modern humans.
Males stood 164 cm to 168 cm and females 152 cm to 156 cm tall.
Since 2010, evidence for substantial admixture of Neanderthals DNA in modern peoples has
accumulated. Evidence of admixture was found in both European and Asian peoples, but not
in Africans, suggesting that interbreeding between Neanderthals and anatomically modern
humans took place after the "out of Africa" migration, likely between 60,000 years and 40,000
years ago.Ever since the discovery of the Neanderthal fossils, expert opinion has been
divided as to whether Neanderthals should be considered a separate species (Homo
neanderthalensis) or a subspecies (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) relative to modern
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humans.Svante Pääbo (2014) described such "taxonomic wars" as unresolvable by definition
since the answerdepends on the definition of Homo sapiens as chronospecies, which has
also been in flux throughout the 20th century. Authorities preferring classification of
Neanderthals as subspecies have introduced the subspecies name Homo sapiens sapiens for
the anatomically modern Cro-Magnon population which lived in Europe at the same time as
Neanderthals, while authorities preferring classification as separate species use Homo
sapiens as equivalent to "anatomically modern humans.”
During the early 20th century, the view of Neanderthals as "simian,” influenced by Arthur
Keith and Marcellin Boule, tended to exaggerate the anatomical differences between
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon. Beginning in the 1930s revised reconstructions of
Neanderthals increasingly emphasized the similarity rather than differences. From the 1940s
throughout the 1970s, it was increasingly common to use the classification Homo sapiens
neanderthalensis vs. Homo sapiens sapiens. The hypothesis of "multiregional origin" of
modern man was expressed in the 1980s on such grounds, arguing for the presence of an
unbroken succession of fossil sites in both Europe and Asia. Hybridization between
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon had been suggested on skeletal and craniological grounds
since the early 20th century, and found increasing support in the later 20th century, until the
Neanderthal admixture was found to be present in modern populations genetics in the 2010s.
Both Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans are thought to have evolved from Homo
erectus between 0.3 and 0.2 million years ago. H. erectus had emerged around 1.8 million
years ago, and had been present, in various subspecies throughout Eurasia. The divergence
time between the Neanderthal and modern human lineages is estimated at between 0.8 and
0.4 million years ago, based on molecular clock studies performed throughout the 1990s to
the 2010s.
Mainstream opinion by the 2010s appears to favor derivation of both Neanderthals and
anatomically modern humans from Homo heidelbergensis which derived from H. erectus by
about 0.6 million years ago. Homo antecessor, an archaic human species postulated in 1997,
and assumed to be the immediate predecessor of H. heidelbergensis, has also been
suggested as the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans.
The taxonomic distinction between H. heidelbergensis and Neanderthals is mostly due to a
fossil gap in Europe between 300,000 and 243,000 years ago . "Neanderthals" by
conventions are fossils which date to after this gap. The quality of the fossil record greatly
increases from 130,000 years ago onward. Specimens younger than this date make up the
bulk of known Neanderthal skeletons and were the first whose anatomy was comprehensively
studied. In morphological studies, the term "classic Neanderthal" may be used in a narrower
sense for Neanderthals younger than 71,000 years old.
Habitat and range.There were likely never more than 70,000 Neanderthals at any given time.
Early Neanderthals, living before the Eemian interglacial (130 000 years), are poorly known
and come mostly from European sites. From 130 000 years onward, the quality of the fossil
record increases dramatically. From then on, Neanderthal remains are found in Western,
Central, Eastern, and Mediterranean Europe, as well as in Southwest, Central, and Northern
Asia up to the Altai Mountains in Siberia. No Neanderthal has ever been found outside
Central to Western Eurasia, namely neither to the south of 35° N (Shuqba, Levant), nor east
of 85° E (Denisova, Siberia), nor north of 55° N (Bontnewydd, Wales),although it is difficult to
assess the limits of their northern range because glacial advances destroy most human
remains, the Bontnewydd tooth being exceptional. Middle Paleolithic artifacts have been
found up to 60° N on the Russian plains.
Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending, in the book The 10,000-Year Explosion,
investigated whether it is accurate to depict Neanderthals as having hair patterns similar to
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anatomically modern humans. They concluded that, "We don't yet know for sure, but it seems
likely that, as part of their adaptation to cold, Neanderthals were furry.”
In 2017, researchers using 3D reconstructions of nasal cavities and Computational Fluid
Dynamics techniques have found that Neanderthals and modern humans both adapted their
noses (independently but in a convergent way) to help breathe in cold and dry conditions.
The large nose seen in Neanderthals, as well as Homo heidelbergensis, affected the shape of
the skull and the muscle attachments, and gave them a weaker bite force than in modern
humans.In The Spread of Modern Humans in Europe (2002), John F. Hoffecker writes,
"Neanderthal sites show no evidence of tools for making tailored clothing. There are only hide
scrapers, which might have been used to make blankets or ponchos. This is in contrast to
Upper Paleolithic (modern human) sites, which have an abundance of eyed bone needles and
bone awls. Moreover, microwear analysis of Neanderthal hide scrapers shows that they were
used only for the initial phases of hide preparation, and not for the more advanced phases of
clothing production.
A 2013 study of Neanderthal skulls suggests that their eyesight may have been better than
that of modern humans, owing to larger eye sockets and larger areas of the brain devoted to
vision.
Neanderthals are known for their large cranial capacity, which at 1,600 cm3 is larger on
average than that of modern humans. In 2008, a group of scientists produced a study using
three-dimensional computer-assisted reconstructions of Neanderthal infants based on fossils
found in Russia and Syria. It indicated that Neanderthal and modern human brains were the
same size at birth, but that by adulthood, the Neanderthal brain was larger than the modern
human brain. They had almost the same degree of encephalization (i.e., brain-to-body-size
ratio) as modern humans.
Neanderthals made stone tools and could make fire, a fire probably got by percussion of a
piece of pyrite on a flint biface and not by using a flame from the embers of a forest fire as
Dutch researchers (Sorensen, Soressi) have demonstrated by studying a series of flints. The
discovery of manganese blocks at the Pech-de-l'Aze site in Dordogne corroborates this
hypothesis (our ancestors had to use powdered manganese to facilitate the start-up).
The Neanderthal skeleton suggests they consumed 100 kcal to 350 kcal (420 kj to 1,460 kj)
more per day than male modern humans of 68.5 kg and females of 59.2 kg.The consensus
on their behavior ends there. It had actually long been debated whether Neanderthals were
hunters or scavengers, but the discovery of the pre-Neanderthal Schöningen wooden spears
in Germany helped settle the debate (in favor of hunting). Most available evidence suggests
they were apex predators, and fed on red deer, reindeer, ibex, wild boar, aurochs and on
occasion mammoth, straight-tusked elephant and rhinoceros. They appear to have
occasionally used vegetables as fallback food, revealed in the 2000s and 2010s by isotope
analysis of their teeth and study of their coprolites (fossilized feces). Dental analysis of
specimens from Spy, Belgium and El Sidron, Spain in 2017 suggested that these
Neanderthals had a wide-ranging diet, and that those of El Sidron seem to have lived on a
mixture of forest moss, pine nuts and a mushroom known as common porecrust.
The size and distribution of Neanderthal sites, along with genetic evidence, suggest that
Neanderthals lived in much smaller and more sparsely distributed groups than anatomically
modern Homo sapiens. The bones of twelve Neanderthals were therefore discovered at EI
Sidron cave in north-west Spain. They are believed to have been a group killed and
butchered about 50,000 years ago. Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA showed that the three
adult males belonged to the same maternal lineage, while the three adult females belonged to
different ones. This suggests a social structure where males remained in the same social
group and females married out.The bones of the El Sidron group show signs of defleshing,
suggesting that they were victims of cannibalism. The Saint-Cesaire 1 skeleton discovered in
1979 at La Roche a Pierrot, France, showed a healed fracture on top of the skull apparently
caused by a deep blade wound.
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Claims that Neanderthals buried their dead, and if they did, whether such burials had any
symbolic meaning, are heavily contested. The debate on deliberate Neanderthal burials has
been active since the 1908 discovery of the well-preserved Chapelle-aux-Saints 1 skeleton in
a small hole of a cave, in southwestern France. A team of researchers reinvestigated the
Chapelle-aux-Saints cave in 2014 and reasserted the claim that the 1908 Neanderthal
specimen had been deliberately buried, and this has in turn been heavily criticized. A 2018
paper discussed, in light of recent developments in the fields of paleogenetics and
paleoanthropology whether or not Neanderthals were rational. The authors' argument focuses
on the genetic evidence that supports interbreeding with Homo sapiens, language acquisition
(including the FOXP2 gene), archeological signs of cultural development and potential for
cumulative cultural evolution.
A 40,000-year-old fragment of raven bones suggests that Neanderthals had a sense of
aesthetic or even of symbolism, a study published in the United States concludes. This one-
and-a-half-centimeter-long piece of bone found on an archeological site in Crimea, Russia,
has eight regular cuts made with a flint.A microscopic analysis showed that the author of
these deep marks had initially made six before realizing that he had left too much space
between some of them. He added two more but so that the distance between all the cuts
remains equal. The researchers then asked a group of volunteers to make eight equidistant
marks on turkey hen bones of the same size. The analysis showed that they had spaced and
carved the eight notches in exactly the same way as the Neanderthal Man did. It has been
shown in this way that the Neanderthal made well cuts with the intention of creating a
harmonious and perhaps symbolic pattern. It may have been marks of ownership of the
object, which in this case symbolized the person possessing it.
A very large number of other claims of Neanderthal art have been made. These are often
taken by the media as showing Neanderthals were capable of symbolic thought, or were
"mental equals" to anatomically modern humans. As evidence of symbolism, none of them
are widely accepted, although the same is true for Middle Paleolithic anatomically modern
humans.
-Flower pollen on the body of pre-Neanderthal Shanidar 4, Iraq, had in 1975 been argued to
be a flower burial. Once popular, this theory is no longer accepted.
-Bird bones were argued to show evidence for feather plucking in a 2012 study examining
1,699 ancient sites across Eurasia, which the authors took to mean Neanderthals wore bird
feathers as personal adornments.
-Deep scratches were found in 2012 on the cave floor underlying Neanderthal layer in
Gorham's Cave, Gibraltar, which some have interpreted as art.
-Two 176,000-year-old stalagmite ring structures, several meters wide, were reported in 2016
more than 300 meters from the entrance within Bruniquel Cave, France. The authors think
artificial lighting had been required as this part of the cave is beyond the reach of daylight and
that the structures had been made by early Neanderthals, the only humans in Europe at this
time.
-In 2015, a study claimed that a number of 130,000-year-old eagle talons found in a cache
near Krapina, Croatia along with Neanderthal bones, had been modified to be used as
jewelry.
All of these nevertheless appeared only in single locations but in 2018, using uranium dating
methods, red-painted symbols comprising a scalariform (ladder shape), a negative hand
stencil, and red lines and dots on the cave walls of three Spanish caves 700 km apart were
dated at least 64,000 years old. If the dating is correct, they were therefore painted before the
time anatomically modern humans are thought to have arrived in Europe. The
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paleoanthropologist John D. Hawks argues these findings demonstrate Neanderthals were
capable of symbolic behavior previously thought to be unique to modern humans.
Interbreeding with Homo sapiens.An alternative to extinction is that Neanderthals were
absorbed into the Cro-Magnon population by interbreeding. This would be counter to strictest
versions of the recent African origin theory, since it would imply that at least part of the
genome of Europeans (30% placed end to end) would descend from Neanderthals.Until the
early 1950s, most scholars believed Neanderthals were not in the ancestry of living humans.
Nevertheless, Thomas H. Huxley in 1904 saw among Frisians the presence of what he
believed to be Neanderthaloid skeletal and cranial characteristics.Hans Peder Steensby
proposed interbreeding in 1907 in the article Race studies in Denmark. He strongly
emphasized that all living humans are of mixed origins. He held that this would best fit
observations, and challenged the widespread idea in that case that Neanderthals were
apelike or inferior. Basing his argument primarily on cranial data, he noted that the Danes, like
the Frisians and the Dutch, exhibit some Neanderthaloid characteristics, and felt it was
reasonable to assume “something was inherited" and that Neanderthals "are among our
ancestors."
Carleton Stevens Coon in 1962 found it likely, based upon evidence from cranial data and
material culture, that Neanderthal and Upper Paleolithic peoples either interbred or that the
newcomers reworked Neanderthal implements "into their own kinds of tools." Christopher
Thomas Cairney in 1989 went further, laying out a rationale for hybridization and adding a
broader discussion of physical characteristics as well as commentary on interbreeding and its
importance to adaptive European phenotypes.
By the early 2000s, the majority of scholars supported the Out of Africa hypothesis,according
to which anatomically modern humans left Africa about 50,000 years ago and replaced
Neanderthals with little or no interbreeding. Yet some scholars still argued for hybridization
with Neanderthals. The most vocal proponent of the hybridization hypothesis was Erik
Trinkaus of Washington University. Trinkaus claimed various fossils as products of hybridized
populations, including the child of Lagar Velho, a skeleton found in Portugal and those of
Pestera Muierii in Romania.
In 2010, geneticists announced that interbreeding had likely taken place, a result confirmed in
2012. The genomes of all non-Africans include portions that are of Neanderthal origin, a
share estimated in 2014 at 3%. This DNA is absent in Sub-Saharan Africans (Yoruba people
and San subjects). Ötzi the iceman, Europe's oldest preserved mummy, was found to
possess an even higher percentage of Neanderthal ancestry. The three percent of
Neanderthal DNA in Europeans and Asians is not the same in all Europeans and Asians in
question.2012 genetic studies seem to suggest that modern humans may have mated with "at
least two groups" of archaic humans: Neanderthals and Denisovans. Some researchers
suggest admixture of 30% of Neandertal DNA placed end to end in modern humans of non-
African ancestry. Detractors have argued and continue to argue that the signal of Neanderthal
interbreeding may be due to an ancient African substructure, and not the result of
interbreeding. John D. Hawks has argued that the genetic similarity to Neanderthals may
indeed be the result of both African substructure and interbreeding, as opposed to just one or
the other.
While some modern human nuclear DNA has been linked to the extinct Neanderthals, no
mitochondrial DNA of Neanderthal origin has been detected, which in primates is always
maternally transmitted. This observation has prompted the hypothesis that whereas female
humans interbreeding with male Neanderthals were able to generate fertile offspring, the
progeny of female Neanderthals who mated with male humans were either rare, absent or
sterile.
According to a 2014 study by Thomas Higham and colleagues of organic samples from
European sites, Neanderthals died out in Europe about 40,000. New dating in Iberia, where
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Neanderthal dates as late as - 28,000 years had been reported, suggests evidence of
Neanderthal survival in the peninsula around -25000.
The international team of scientists who have excavated the cave of Gorham at Gibraltar has
found two recent stratigraphic layers.It found a Mousterian-type lithic industry which
characterizes the techniques used by Homo neanderthalensis but the charcoal samples found
in the cave have been dated - 24,000 years for the most recent and - 33,000 years for the
oldest . This charcoal was in the same archeological layers where the stone tools attributed to
Neanderthal were found. The presence of Neanderthal 24,000 years ago is therefore
presumed in Gibraltar. For Clive Finlayson (of the Gibraltar Museum), this proves that the
Gorham cave is the last place on the planet where we know that Neanderthal lived.Until now
it was thought that Neanderthals passed 28,000 years ago. This new study therefore
postpones of 4,000 years the disappearance of Homo neanderthalensis.It should be noted
that this late Neanderthal presence in Gibraltar can only really be confirmed with the
discovery of fossil remains.
Anatomically modern humans arrived in Mediterranean Europe between 45,000 and 43,000
years ago, so the two human populations shared Europe for several thousand years. The
exact nature of biological and cultural interaction between Neanderthals and other human
groups is contested.
Possible scenarios for the extinction of the Neanderthals are:
-Neanderthals were a separate species from modern humans, and became extinct (because
of climate change or contact with modern humans) and were replaced by modern humans
moving into their habitat between 45,000 years and 40,000 years ago. Jared Diamond has
suggested a scenario of violent conflict and displacement.
-Neanderthals were a subspecies that bred with modern humans and disappeared through
absorption (interbreeding assumption).
-About 55,000 years ago, the climate began to fluctuate wildly from extreme cold conditions to
mild cold and back in a matter of decades. Raw material sourcing and the examination of
faunal remains by Adler et alii in 2006 in the southern Caucasus, suggest that modern
humans may have had a survival advantage during this period, being able to use social
networks in order to get resources from areas larger than those of Neanderthals. These
researchers found that in both the Late Middle Paleolithic and Early Upper Paleolithic more
than 95% of stone artifacts were drawn from local material, suggesting Neanderthals
restricted themselves to more local sources.
-Modern humans may have introduced a disease that contributed to the extinction of
Neanderthals. When Neanderthal ancestors left Africa roughly 100,000 years earlier, they
then adapted to the pathogens in their new European environment, unlike modern humans
who adapted to African pathogens. This transcontinental movement is known as the Out of
Africa model. When contact occurred between these humans and Neanderthals in Europe
and Asia, the first contact may have been devastating to the Neanderthal population, because
they didn’t have any immunity to the African pathogens. More recent historical events in
Eurasia and the Americas caused a similar phenomenon. The unintentional introduction of
viral or bacterial pathogens to unprepared peoples has led to mass mortality and almost local
population extinction. The most well-known example of this is the arrival of Christopher
Columbus to the New World, which brought and introduced foreign diseases within a native
people who had no immunity.
We saw that 30 percent of Neanderthal DNA survived in modern humans, notably expressed
in the skin, hair and modern diseases. Modern human genes involved in making keratinthe
protein found in skin, hair, and nailshave specially high levels of Neanderthal DNA.
POU2F3 is found in around 66 percent of East Asians, while the Neanderthal version of
BNC2, which affects skin color, among other traits, is found in about 70 percent of Europeans.
Neanderthalian are the variants in genes that affect the risk of several diseases, including
lupus, biliary cirrhosis, Crohn's disease, and type 2 diabetes. The genetic variant of the MC1R
gene linked to red hair in Neanderthals has not been found in modern humans; hence, red
hair may be an example of convergent evolution.
55
More recent research suggests that NeanderthalHomo sapiens sapiens interbreeding
appears to have occurred asymmetrically among the ancestors of modern-day humans, and
that this is a possible rationale for differing frequencies of Neanderthal-specific DNA in the
genomes of modern humans.
A study in April 2016 found differences between modern human and Neanderthal Y
chromosomes that, they postulated, could cause female Homo sapiens sapiens to miscarry
male babies that had Neanderthal fathers. This could explain why no modern man had to date
been found with a Neanderthal Y chromosome. Evidence that Neanderthal genomic material
is often found among genes of the immune system suggests that some of the interbreeding
may have secured resistance to diseases that Neanderthal populations had bred resistance
to.There have been at least three episodes of interbreeding.The first would have occurred
soon after modern humans left Africa.The second would have occurred after the ancestral
Melanesians had branched offthese people seem to have thereafter bred with
Denisovans.The third would have involved the ancestors of East Asians only.
In 2016 researchers reported that they had found modern Human DNA in the genome of a
female Neanderthal from the Altai mountains region near the border between Mongolia and
Russia. They calculated that the mating must have taken place about 100,000 years ago.
Melanesians and Australoid peoples show evidence of only one interbreeding event, possibly
about 100,000 years ago, occurring in the Middle East.Europeans show a second event,
which may also be of Middle Eastern origin, occurring possibly 50,000 years ago.East Asians
show an additional third interbreeding event possibly 30,000 years ago occurring in Siberia.
AND NOW POLYGENISM OR MONOGENISM?Monogenism is the idea according to which
current modern men come from a single couple (it is the Judaeo-Islamic Christian idea based
on the Bible). Variant : current modern men don’t come from a single couple, but have the
same origin nevertheless: several couples therefore but of a single clan (druidism or
monocentrism).
Polygenism is the idea according to which current modern men come from several couples (it
is the racist idea in the non-necessarily political sense of the word). Variant: current modern
men have essentially the same origin, i.e. the same primordial clan (druidism or poly-
centrism), but with genetic contributions of other human races like Neanderthal, Denisova
men, Flores men, or others…
Work of Lamarck and Darwin will hustle these models which will be renamed mono-centrism
and poly-centrism. The differences between current human peoples can be quite simply the
result of evolution. Poly-centrism then putting back further in time the origin of these
differences observed between the various current peoples on the Earth. Homo erectus would
have spread in the Old world, evolving everywhere in Homo sapiens, but some genetic
exchanges would have been still existed between the various lineages. Current mankind so
would have several cradles, connected the ones to the others following the nomadism of
peoples.
The idea which currently prevails in the scientific world with regard to the origin of modern
man is that of the out of Africa of Homo sapiens approximately 50 000,100 000, or 200.000
years ago; some Homo sapiens who would have replaced Homo erectus in Asia and Homo
Neanderthalensis in Europe. Tools discovered in the north of the Arab Peninsula would be for
example the piece of evidence of the crossing, in the area, of modern man, 125.000 years
ago.Certain scientific works make think that Neanderthals would be the source of 4% of the
genetic inheritance of Europeans and that Denisova men would be the source of 6% of the
gene pool of Melanesians.The site of the Denisova cave is known since the 1970s. The site is
56
located in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. Traces of human occupation: some teeth and
fragments of a phalanx of the little finger, unearthed in 2008, on the site. Various studies
show that this cave has been used by hominids for 125.000 years. Many found elements
come from the transition between the Middle Paleolithic and the Upper Paleolithic (- 35 000
years): stone tools, pearls, pendants, needles, an engraved shell of ostrich eggs and a green
bracelet. These various objects are of Mousterian style.
For more details or accuracy see the various scientific works on the subject which are the
only ones to be authoritative in this field, in what concerns us we do nothing but popularize
these notions.
In any case the Irish Book reporting the various conquests of the country (Lebor Gabala
Erenn) is right about one point: the various settlements in this area of the world come all by
very far, from South-east.
N.B. On the other hand, we will say nothing here about the Grimaldi Man in order not to feed
the black racism/anti-racism very widespread nowadays and which consists in making this
human group the first modern men in Europe, source of any civilization and from which men
of Cro-Magnon would result by discoloration or degeneration. Racism does not interest us
and we leave therefore these racist nonsense or phantasms to Sheikh Anta Diop. In 1962
Pierre Legoux had definitively refuted the conclusions of Verneau by noting various
manipulations in the reassembly of the fossils emphasizing characteristics then compared
with characteristics common to Negroid types. And Yves Coppens had identified in the
Grimaldi Man a simple people of modern men, in other words, of Cro-Magnon in Europe (with
the Chancelade man, the Combe-Capelle man, the Brno man, the Mladec man, and the
Predmost man). Sorry for the racist/anti-racist nonsense or phantasms in vogue among
respectable people, nice, smart, learned, but poor, of course; because they give everything
they earn to poorer than them, it’s obvious! It goes without saying.
57
THE LAST HUMAN WAVE: THE TIME OF “MEN” (OF THE TRUE ONES).
But let us leave Neanderthals there and let us return to the history of our direct ancestors. As
we had the opportunity to discover it, a being separate, in the animal kingdom, little by little
appeared elsewhere in East Africa: modern Man.
N.B. Biologists, ethnologists and paleontologists, think that the last descendants of this first
human race still live on Earth: they are the Bushmen, whose last representatives live in the
Kalahari Desert in South Africa. They show indeed a primitive morphology and a mixture of
European features (fine skin, fine features), African (crisp hair, more or less dark skin) and
Asian (high cheekbones of Mongolians and almond eyes of Asians). While observing these
men, we discover what the first representatives of Homo sapiens could resemble. To meet
these tribes therefore does honor mankind and always has something very moving for all the
people being interested in the origin of human beings.
The last stage of the peopling of Earth is therefore that of the doubly wise man (the Homo
sapiens sapiens in Latin. Cranial capacity: approximately 1.500 cm3) in other words, that of
the druids, since druid in Celtic language means precisely “high knower” (dru-wids). Dru is an
intensive prefix and wids an Indo-European stem meaning “to see” and “to know” (Sanskrit
veda, German wissen…) and that is expressed particularly in an incredible knowledge of the
plants from any point of view. The Bushmen of the area knew thousands of plants as well as
their use - either medicinal, or deadly, or mystical, for food or else for the entertainment -
while showing a deep empathy with surrounding fauna through an attractive (cave) art, which
continues to intrigue.Let us underline nevertheless once again, considering the incredible
stupidity of certain French press articles on the subject * that the current Africans, of the
North-East Africa (except for Ethiopian Gallas or Amharas) are too resulting from very old
migrations which replaced the former peoples of Pygmy type or Hottentots and Bushmen
type.There are 10 000 years East Africans spoke Khoisan (a click language still practiced
today by Bushmen and Hottentots) and formed small communities of hunter-gatherers. There
were perhaps also Pygmies.5.000 years ago began a whole series of migrations.The first
newcomers were farmers and shepherds speaking a Cushitic language, coming from what is
currently Ethiopia. They lived in family small groups and brought their traditions, perpetuated
by their descendants. The following immigration began circa 1000 before our era with the
arrival of Bantus come from the Niger delta in West Africa. Thanks to their know-how in
agriculture, their work of metal and their steel production, they absorbed the groups already
present and became the greatest ethnolinguistic family of East Africa.Later, the arrival of
Nilotic small groups since the current South Sudan marked the last migratory wave. This flood
goes on until the 18th century, but the main movements took place in the 15th and 16th
centuries. The majority of them were shepherds they include particularly Masai and
Turkana- and settled on the least fertile lands in the south of Kenya or in the north of
Tanzania.The 300 ethnic groups that this area of the world houses, today, are therefore the
result of these migrations and absolutely not some descendants remained on the spot of the
first modern men having lived in the cradle of mankind.
And yet, extremely serious conclusion and questioning on the philosophical or civilization
level, though intrinsically contradictory, of the journalist, following this article: “In the course of
his conquest of the world, man lost phonemes just like he lost elements of his genetic
richness. Should it be concluded from it that current African immigration is a chance to enrich
our language and our chromosomes?”
It is time to put an end to this mentality of horse breeders frequent among anti-racists with
regard to the (legitimate and happy) biodiversity of mankind. Stop to the dangerous implicit
racism concealed behind the mask of the anti-racist provocation, consisting in insinuating that
the current melanoderm Africans (like the Wolof people for example) would have remained
closer to the original human type, therefore more true men, that Asian Europeans or
58
Amerindians; that the latter would be descendants having deviated, of the original type, in a
way made dull impoverished or degenerated; in short, less true men than the Blacks.The
original inhabitants of these places were not some Africans of Nilotic Sudanese Guinean
Congolese, or Bantu, type; but some Pygmies, Hottentots or Bushmen, even some Ethiopians
of Galla or Amhara type. Asians Europeans or Amerindians are therefore as much heirs to the
first men that all these melanoderm Africans. In other words, the black Africans are not more
than the Americans the Asians or the Europeans the heirs to the first men, of whom we ignore
the color, of course, in reality. Perhaps it was intermediate quite simply, like that of
Ethiopians, or ocher like that of Bushmen, who are, of course, their descendants having less
changed although having also evolved. But less than the Black White or Yellow. As for
knowing the language, they spoke… a click language?
There still nevertheless, let us remind that for more details or specifications you must refer to
the various scientific works on the subject, which are the only ones to be authoritative in this
field, because in what concerns us, we do nothing but popularize these concepts.Still today
hunter-gatherers and the last users in Africa, with the Pygmies, of bows, Bushmen, are the
distant heirs to the Neolithic peoples who have left a little everywhere in this area a lot of cave
paintings and engravings.
But if the rock art of these people survived, it is the result of a bitter irony. They were indeed
pursued by the Zulus, the Basothos, the Europeans, and several other tribes, because of their
idea according to which the cattle belonged to nobody in particular. They were pushed back in
the Kalahari Desert and the Drakensberg mountains, in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, what
ensured the durability of their cave paintings. Cf. Joseph Millerd Orpen and his article on the
mythology of Bushmen published in 1874.
N.B. As for the Hottentots, they adopted the breeding of bovidae of sheep and of goats. In
fact, their origin is not clear. They could result from the interbreeding of Bushmen and of a
first Bantu, or perhaps Hamitic, group, appeared in the area during the very first centuries of
our era. They are sometimes connected with the peoples who practiced the extraction and the
work of iron and copper as soon as the fourth century (South of Limpopo River and current
Natal). But there still, nothing is sure and it is necessary to wait a much more recent time so
that their history is clarified.Now let us do justice to these peoples, peoples quite wrongfully
despised, even denied in their contribution to the formation of the first mankind, since there is
a full chance that we are all the descendants of them, more or less directly.
Bushmen are therefore the descendants of the men of the First Stone Age.Their clans and
their vaguely related groups of families followed the seasonal migrations of animals between
the mountains range and the coast… living in caves, under rock overhangs or in temporary
shelters made of branches and of antelope skins. These wandering tribes did not tame the
animals and cultivated nothing, even if their knowledge of fauna and flora were encyclopedic.*
We all speak African,” Le Point, 04 21 2011. By Frederic Lewino. Giving an account of a
study on the language published in the review Science, done by Quentin Atkinson of the
University of Auckland in New Zealand. Here what not rigorous enough from the scientific
point of view, studies, give, in the hands of semi-well-read men having nevertheless chosen
the trade of “masses” information.
THE LAST HUMAN WAVE IN EUROPE.
This peopling is an enigma, because there is, in a way, a link which is missing between it and
its immediate predecessor.
Homo Erectus still existed in Europe, but also in Africa and Asia 350.000 years ago.
59
Considering the important differences and the real qualitative leap they represent, the
question which is asked is the following one. Did Homo Erectus evolve in Europe in Asia and
in Africa simultaneously, for really giving birth, WITH NEANDERTHAL IN EURASIA, to Homo
sapiens (of Eurasia), what could explain the existence of various peoples. Or then on the
contrary is the doubly wise man (dru-wids) resulting from one stock of homo erectus, as in the
biblical myth of Eve and Adam; Neanderthals having been only a dead end or an evolutionary
deadlock?
The large quantity of peopling centers contributed to the relatively early diversification of
Homo sapiens. There remains nevertheless difficult to specify the centers from which
dispersion could happen.For some authors, Homo sapiens would have appeared, there are
100.000 or 150.000 years, elsewhere in Palestine (a thing well seen by the Irish Lebor
Gabala) or in its surroundings.
According to certain specialists less 90 clans of a few tens of individuals each one hardly
would have given the current human peopling. 36 for Europe. 31 for Northern Asia. 15 for
Australia. And 8 remained in Africa.We cannot prevent ourselves from thinking of the Irish
druid Fenius Farsaid and of his 72 initial languages.The seven billion human beings we are
would therefore all come from these 50.000 or 100.000 individuals, and not from various
branches of Homo Erectus.For other authors, each main lineage of Homo Erectus would have
undergone a parallel evolution, and would be the origin of a sapiens settlement. That could
have even led to certain current human types (Australians, Veddas in Sri Lanka, Melanesians,
and Ainus in Japan). Thus would be explained, partly, the majority of the differences noted
between the different human peoples today.
But some other authors, as we could see, incline towards a paleanthropian origin of Homo
sapiens. This one could have been done, either from the Neanderthals of Shanidar, or from
traditional Neanderthals in Europe. The reduction of the craniofacial bones would be only a
simple cultural phenomenon, and would follow the giving up of the intensive use of the front
teeth.Other divergences of our scholars (it is like in the Lebor Gabala Erenn)! Whereas
certain authors give great importance to the evolution on the spot, others suppose vast
migrations and made the Cro-Magnon men in Western Europe, coming from the mixed
Sapiens of Kafzeh or Skhul in Israel.The only thing sure, that the current paleontologists can
note, it is that the Archanthropians or sons of Neanderthal, in Europe, disappear suddenly to
give way to Cro-Magnon i.e. to Homo sapiens (dru-wids in Celtic). But without the filiation of
the latter is obvious.
Between mono-genism or mono-centrism of biblical type and poly-genism or poly-centrism of
“pagan” type, the debate continues to be raging, and the problem is not simple, paleontology
biology and linguistics making it a true headache.What is certain finally it is that Fenius
Farsaid and his seventy-two primordial clans, origin of current Mankind, eh well were not so
distant than that from truth! Except for a nuance!This Irish druid, besides passably mythical,
made rather it, a question of languages and of semantics (the Celtic language chosen for its
clearness or its beauty….)
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PRE-INDO-EUROPEANS I (Return to Cro-Magnon Man).
Circa - 120.000 years the first of the Cro-Magnon men before the term was ever invented,
appears, the Fontechevade man (French department of Charente). The current man indeed is
at least 100.000 years old. Besides he lived a certain time next to the men of the previous
population on the Earth, Homo Neanderthalensis, as we have just seen, but he will also be a
painter, a sculptor, a musician, a shepherd, a potter, a smith, and so on.
Whereas Neanderthal died out, the Cro-Magnon man coming from Africa by the Middle East
settled in Europe and everywhere where he can set foot. He differs from Neanderthals, in
addition to his morphology, with an important difference of genetic order. In front of this
“natural” obstacle more than one expert think today that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons,
even if they lived at some strides from each other, never lived in the same clans and never
shared their gene pool.
Except under the constraint. Because it seems obvious that, in front of the physical beauty of
Cro-Magnon, the last Neanderthals carried out perhaps some abductions to conquer girls
more beautiful than life. But it is not very probable that the young Cro-Magnon warriors
remained sitting idly facing this situation, what also could contribute to the extinction of
Neanderthals. At all events, from their union no little sapiens could have been born, for lack of
genetic compatibility, with a few rare exceptions. However, as soon as the time of Cro-
Magnon, as well the men of African savannas as those of Asia and China, belonged to the
same species, they shared the same gene pool. What did nothing but accelerate their
expansion and make their development easier.
The Cro-Magnon man was the European representative of Homo sapiens or modern
man.The Cro-Magnon man was defined by A. de Quatrefages and Hamy. According to the
skeletons found by chance in 1868, under the shelter of Cro-Magnon (close to Les Eyzies),
during the construction of the railway from Perigueux to Agen (French department of
Dordogne). There were five skeletons: an old man, who provided the elements of the
diagnosis of the type, two adults, a woman and a fetus.The “old man” was tall: 1, 82 m.The
skull was dolichocephalic (index: 7, 37) and bulky (1 590 cm3). Cro-Magnons represent a
great and beautiful human type who lived during Upper Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic.
The vault of his skull is high, the brow bones not very prominent. The face is low and broad,
the orbits lowered, rectangular, the nose long and passably narrow. The chin is robust and
prominent. The upper limbs are relatively long.
His civilization developed since Perigordian ( 35 000 years) to Azilian ( 8 000 years). His
life was creative and spiritual. The majority of his remains were found in caves and rock
shelters. It is in the Magdalenian, between 18.000 and 10.000 before the common era, that he
left behind him an astonishing collection of cut stones (scrapers, laurel leaves, needles, etc.)
and some splendid cave paintings; of which oldest dates back to 31.000 years (Chauvet
cave). The most beautiful cave paintings are in Spain (Altamira cave), or France (Lascaux
and La Combe d'Arc caves) as well as in Italy (Valcamonica).This evolution of his civilization
is explained by the fact that Cro-Magnon lived at one time when food was in the sufficiency,
what gave him time to think. His intelligence enabled him to be a skillful technician, a
craftsman and an artist. It is at that time that we find the first flute worked in a bone.
Apparently therefore at this time the absence of a law on the royalties such the French law
known as Hadopi, prevented by no means artistic creation or cultural life. These first men
tried to understand what the sense of life and of death was, by calling upon supernatural
powers during the ceremonies devoted to the worship of soul/minds. Their language was
probably to be close to that of the Australian aborigines or of the American Indian songs.
Better perhaps, of the Bushmen in South Africa. Several navigators of the end of the Middle
Age reported that the Guanches, former inhabitants of Canary Islands, practiced, in addition
to their usual language, a whistled language, currently known under the name of silbo. This
one enabled them to communicate from a valley into a valley over several kilometers. And the
61
inhabitants of the village of Aas (French department of Pyrenees-Atlantiques) also
communicated by whistling from a side of the valley to another. Guanches were men more
than two meters high, with clear skin, living on breeding and agriculture before the arrival of
the Spanish colonists. Many of them were, alas, sold as slaves in North Africa. We will never
emphasize enough the evil this crime against mankind caused (the slavery).The emigration of
Cro-Magnon men was done gradually, and ends up reaching the antipodes. We find his
traces in Siberia, in the Sunda Archipelago (Timor), in Australia, in New Zealand, in the
Bering Strait, and finally in North and South America.This peopling of the whole Earth caused
a numerical increase of populations, which amounted to several ten million individuals, and
ends up dividing our species into several distinct groups.We should not especially imagine
from this appearance of Homo sapiens, a final somatic fixing of genetic pool.
According to some authors, the gene pool divergence ("raciation") would have begun indeed
approximately 120.000 years ago.The discovery in France even of the Chancelade race and
of the Grimaldi race, mentioned above, would prove it. But we saw what it was necessary to
think of that (all these skeletons belong in fact to the modern mankind, known as Cro-Magnon
in Europe).With regard to humans, paleontology and, more recently, molecular biology, on
another level, confirm some separations.The first would have happened approximately
120.000 years ago; and would have taken place between Negroid group and those which
were going to form, 60.000 years after, Europoid and Mongoloid groups, American
Mongoloids being outdistanced then, 20.000 years later, by Asian Mongoloids (Chinese,
Japanese, Micronesians). Mongoloids would result from a variety of Homo erectus come to a
pre-Neanderthal shape, having experimented then, in South Siberia, a Neanderthaloid stage,
to give finally, after this particular evolution, the yellow group, whose differentiation continued.
But some "races" with less marked yellow characteristics, closer to the original type, then let
themselves outdistanced by the "races" whose Mongolic type was being accentuated.North-
Mongols, and South-Mongols, who occupy Central Asia, form TODAY the “typical yellows“ in
the sense that they show Asian characteristics more marked than the peoples who surround
them, driven back to the cold, arid or tropical zones, in Asia.It is the same thing in other
groups, Europoid and Negroid, where we note the same process of differentiation.Among the
black people, for example. Among the Melanesians, the first-formed peoples, Australian
aborigines and Veddas in Sri Lanka, preserved many initial features, but certain groups
accentuated little by little their Negroid features.More tardily formed, these other South-
Hominids therefore match the black races themselves.They developed in an arc of a circle
surrounding the Indian Ocean, from the tip of Africa to Melanesia through India.The branch
known as Eastern gave Melanesians and Negritos; through much of its features, it still
reminds of Australians. The most Western branch gave Melano-Africans, with Pygmies and
Ethiopians. Here on the contrary, and particularly among the Blacks in Africa, the
specialization was extraordinarily marked: the “black” features reach here their maximum
degree.
CORRECTION.
The enrichment of the genetic material through the interbreeding and the influence of the
climatic conditions produced many morphological changes, which caused raciation (some
human groups characterized by the more or less high frequency of certain genes regarding
their phenotype or their bodily appearance). These phenotype differences or bodily
appearance differences were accentuated over centuries. And thus we find today Negroid,
Caucasian, Mongoloid, Australoid and Capoid (Hottentots and Bushmen) peoples, with short
or crisp hair or, with clear or dark skin, in order to better respond to the requests of the
climate. These differences themselves are subdivided ad infinitum. Only the isolated peoples
preserved their gene pool. Nowadays this insulation, however, is destined to decline in the
immediate future in front of the increase of the population on our planet and of the
globalization. Before perhaps going again one day in the opposite direction (in the direction of
the biodiversity) because of decreasing and of re-localization.
ANOTHER CORRECTION.
Communication to the Science Academy made by M.F. Hammer on May 9, 2000 (I
summarize).
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In spite of their long exile in many countries, the Jewish communities remained very close
on the genetic level. The results of this work suggest the hypothesis of a single paternal gene
for the various Jewish communities of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, and imply
the possibility that these Jewish communities come from a former people of the Middle East.
This work also showed, considering the very strong stability of the genetic profile that many
communities remained isolated, therefore that there was not mixture with the gene pool of the
non-Jews “.The base of this ethnological research is founded on the study of the Y
chromosome, which does not change between father and son. By studying the “genetic
signatures” of several groups of the Diaspora, we can show the genetic relations being able to
exist between the various communities. The beginning of this study started through the
Cohen. These studies showed a strong resemblance of the genetic profiles being able to exist
between the cohanim today and their ancestors having lived 3.000 years
ago?????????????????????????????????????????????????????.
Note of Peter DeLaCrau. A Y chromosome, which does not change between father and
son… And the Holy Spirit in all that? It goes without saying that the today druids can only
refuse this kind of crap, chromosome or Abraham’s genome type, and others. Too bad if our
Jewish friends are offended. If to be racist or anti-Semite today is to say that there is not or
that there is no longer pure races for ages, and that there are not more Jewish race than
squared circles, or roasted-spit butter, as one of my Parisian pen-friends says; then long life
to racism and antisemitism. And too bad for the egos wounded in their hubris!
63
THE TRUE GENEALOGY
OF THE GAELS OF THE BRITONS, ETC.
FOR THE CURRENT HISTORIAN DRUIDS.
Finally, Irish apocryphal texts are not as wrong as that when they make this time the Age of
scholars (that is to be the only thing more or less true in their incredible history of
invasions).The last wave of peopling, quite proto-historical that one, which implied the Gauls *
in general (Gaileoin) and particularly some Dumnonians or Belgians (Fir Domnain and Fir
Bolg).This last appearance of Celtic invaders, such as it is incorporated in Irish mythology, is
indeed an undeniable metaphor of current Homo sapiens.The date of the conquest of Earth
by this Homo sapiens, of course, on the other hand, is not at all that which is suggested by
the texts that we studied. Our ancestors had only a vague idea of the length of the human
evolution, their collective memory not going back beyond the late Neolithic era.
* Galióin, Gaileoin, Gáileóin, Gáilióin, Gailioin.
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PRE-INDO EUROPEANS II.
The last texts of the medieval druidism of the Book of Conquests (Lebor Gabala Erenn) are,
alas, too much inaccurate, or let us say, too poetic (see for example the case of the rather
mythical king and in the bad sense of the word, called Ariomannos/Eremon, in the Irish
apocryphal legends) to be usable.
Brittonic traditions as for them, don’t be worth much either, from the point of view of
protohistory; and dynastic legends show only an obvious resemblance between the Welsh
Prydain and the Brettanos noted by the Greeks, by approximate transcription of this tradition.
The bardic jumbles about Menw Wyd, Menw Hen and his wife Maws, Hu Kadarn and
Kerridwen, the bad boy Afagg ddu/Afang ddu, the couple Dwy Fan and Dwy Fach, do not
make possible serious protohistoric data. There is also an anachronism as for Hu Kadarn and
the connections we can make with the biblical genesis are obviously distortions wanted by the
Christianized bards of the Middle Ages. More interesting would be the legend of the
neutralization of the evil people of the Corraniaid, but it is too, crammed with anachronisms
since it is spoken about King Arthur in it.
Our intention being definitely not to make a historical study on the subject, our intention being
definitely not to compete with historians, but to provide the basis of a theological reflection
being able to replace Judaeo-Islamic-Christianity; we will thus say only a few words on the
subject.
We may consider, artificially, that there exist two periods basically different in the evolution of
Homo erectus, since it is to them that we owe the control of fire: before fire and after fire.
The discovery of fire or more exactly the getting of its control upset the evolution of hominids.
It was undoubtedly the main driving force of the territorial expansion into zones with a climate
so harsh that our ancestors were unable to settle there before its discovery. This
appropriation of fire also involved a strengthening of the social link by regrouping
individuals.Fire also made possible the change of the making-processes of weapons, for
example the hardening of their tips in fire. It took part therefore in a stronger effectiveness of
the hunting techniques, making it possible thus to eat more meat, in any case to reduce the
scavenging in favor of hunting.
Fire will also make possible to change the food practices in a considerable way. It will carry
out a better conservation of meat products; will make them more easily digestible, and more
easily assimilated.
Fire will finally make possible to eat in an easier way some vegetable substances, either by
direct cooking, by boiling or an equivalent process, for example thanks to stones reddened
and immersed in containers, or by preparation of round flat bread…
The excavations carried out these last years in Georgia, then in Bulgaria, make it possible to
affirm that genus Homo exists in Europe since approximately 1, 5 million years. It is indeed
probable that his representatives had peopled Europe from the Caucasus while following the
Danubian way.
The man of industrial civilization knows hunting, gathering and fishing. If they are never a
matter of indifference and can even, such as hunting, unleash passions, these activities
remain however specific, and contrast sharply with all that form the universe in which,
however, they are exerted. Devoting oneself to it a few days each year has indeed only very
little to do with hunting, fishing and gathering, every day, in order to live.We can, however,
divide the societies of hunter-gatherers into two tendencies according to their mode of
redistribution.Non-egalitarian societies, with a differed redistribution.More egalitarian
societies, with an immediate redistribution.The first store their surpluses, the seconds eat their
production in one day or two.
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The societies of hunter-gatherers tend not to have a hierarchical social structure, but it is not
always the case. Being wandering, most of the time they do not have the possibility of storing
food surpluses. They cannot therefore support leaders, craftsmen, officers or civil servants,
full-time.
These groups devoted only a few hours per day to their looking for food. What was regarded,
still not long ago, as an anarchistic wandering was, on the contrary, a cyclic nomadism made
up of quite precise ways, marked out with sites chosen for their possibilities - animals, fruits,
berries, wild grasses, and water points.
But moving is possible only on the condition of having few things to carry. It is not a question
of destitution or of poverty, but quite on the contrary, of light equipment, made of utensils and
tools very few, perfectly adapted to multiple functions, and being able to be easily made. It
was also noted that, during their trips, hunter-gatherers took only part of the plants and of the
animals on which they lived and that, moreover, they let aside many edible vegetable species.
Not to overexploit the environment, to privilege diversity at the same time as savors, as many
techniques of nature management which carry out that, at the time of the next crossing, the
resources will be still present. In addition, this way of life does not lead, far from it, to a state
of malnutrition. That the eaten plants and animals are foreign to our tastes should not surprise
nor, especially, imply that they are there inedible food and with low nutritional value.
To practice storage, of course, would amount paralyzing nomadism in fact. Its absence has
important social implications. The food gathered by the individuals is immediately
redistributed then eaten in the group, practice which highlights the egalitarianism of these
societies where the sexual division of work allocation of functions between men and women
- forms the only social differentiation between individuals.Hunting is the business of men,
gathering that of women. Even if hunting is more promoted, 70% of the food comes from
gathering, and it is during trips that women gather wild plants, roots and herbs, that they will
prepare at the time of the stops. The group moves without haste, remains in the camp one or
two days, sometimes more, and is made up of only a few individuals. It is made up of several
families, forms a part and claimed to be a part of a tribe which meets only in exceptional
circumstances.
In order not to over exploit the environment, there exists among hunter-gatherers some
control mechanisms of the population and of the group's size. Birth spacing makes it possible
the population not to too much increase, and, in order to control density, the groups split up,
decreasing so, in a given area, the number of individuals and the pressure exerted on
environment.Conversely, when certain resources are locally abundant, several groups can
gather. This flexibility, breaking away in a case, fusion in the other, is closely related to the
natural conditions. But it must also be socially possible.The rules of marriage, complicated,
can schematically be presented like mechanisms intended to control, as well the relations
between the groups, as the relative localization of a group in a given territory. In addition, the
flexibility which characterizes the societies of hunter-gatherers, is also to be understood
compared with their absence of coercive power. The breaking out of the group therefore is not
only motivated by an ecological imperative, it is also related to the particular nature of the
policy in these societies.Social rules are complex, rites and myths very elaborate; the
richness of the social and the time which is devoted to it, contrast with the simplicity of the
material civilization.
Specialists generally divide Paleolithic into four large periods.
- Archaic Paleolithic (or Very Old Paleolithic, between 7 million and 1, 7 million years before
the Common Era approximately) which matches the emergence of the Australopithecus, of
the human lineage, as well as the appearance of first tools.
- Lower Paleolithic (between 1, 7 million and approximately 500.000 years) defined by the
appearance of bifaces.
- Middle Paleolithic (between 500.000 and approximately 40.000 years) during which the
method of Levallois cutting up becomes widespread, and which also sees the appearances of
Neanderthal as well as modern Man (in Europe Cro-Magnon).The Mousterian is an industrial
complex very difficult to disentangle, because questions of ways of life and of technology
intertwine there. Indeed, from one area to another, relative proportions and aspect of the
various tools vary very strongly. Mousterian in Europe is the culture characteristic of
Neanderthal. But Homo sapiens also cut stone, in the Middle East and in the Maghreb.
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- Upper Paleolithic (between 40.000 and about 9000 years) which is defined by the
development of laminar cutting up.Modern men (of whom the first traces in Africa date back to
200.000 years) appear in Europe 40.000 years ago, illustrated in particular by Cro-Magnon
men.During the second part of the last glaciation (Würm), Homo sapiens take possession of
Europe and as soon as the climate enables it, at the end of this Würm glaciation, the pre-
Alpine massifs of Western Alps attract fishers, hunters and trappers.The rest of the alpine arc
remains still practically ignored. Apart from very rare sites having remains of the beginning of
Upper Paleolithic circa - 30.000, in some caves North of Venezia, with Chatelperronian
industry (caves of Ponte di Veja, close to Prun and of the Riparo Tagliente); and of a cutting
workshop of Aurignacian technique in the Vercors, France, recently discovered. Some
settlements in Slovenia, particularly in Potocka cave, which is located in 1700 m of altitude, or
in Mokriska Jama cave, would also be Aurignacian.First civilization of modern Man in Europe,
Aurignacian is characterized by a laminar cutting up. As well as by tools having characteristic
shape, as scrapers made up of a strangulated shape blade, or assegais with base split in
order to make their fitting easier. Art booms with the multiplication of statuettes and the
decoration of caves (example the Chauvet cave in France).
Magdalenians and Azilians, last hunters of reindeers.It is necessary to await the glacial time
end, the progressive warming, although discontinuous, and the almost complete deglaciation,
to see the pre-Alpine massifs approached by the hunters of the end of Upper Paleolithic, from
12.000 before our era. This phenomenon affects only Western Alps; neither Switzerland,
neither Italy, nor Germany, show such deep inroads into their mountains.
Probably also attracted, by the flint resources, they found during three or four thousand years,
specific hunting grounds, inside the pre-Alpine massifs or at their foot (Vercors, Chartreuse,
Les Bornes); and in the large transverse valleys which separate them (transverse valley of
Grenoble, transverse valley of the Rhone at Pierre-Chatel). Never entering farther central
massifs than the cold still bracing made probably too inhospitable.In Switzerland
Magdalenians always remained outside of the massifs, camping in caves at the foot of the
Saleve, close to Geneva, not far from the Rhone.
Everywhere they found on heights abundant fauna and full of fish torrents; all installed their
summer encampment close to water. Birds of arctic and alpine species were very hunted as
well as the game (especially ibex and marmot, more rarely reindeer, chamois and stag, etc.).
As climate warming continues, from 10.000 before our era, the vegetable cover of the plains
around Alps get denser. The Azilian hunters go up in the same areas, superimposing their
tools and their fireplaces to those of their Magdalenian predecessors, because they sought
the same shelters at times with climate still not very clement.Fishing is still practiced, but also
some particular hunting, of which that of marmot, slaughtered in great number for their hide (1
200 individuals in the cave of the Passagere in Meaudre…) In Switzerland, in Appenzell,
close to the Wildkirchli cave at 1500 m of altitude, chamois and ibexes attract seasonal
hunters.
The middle of the Alps is not reached and the large passes are not yet practiced, with an
exception, however. In the Hautes-Alpes a settlement of outdoor, in Vitrolles, on the bank of
the Durance River, in France, has tools of the late Gravettian type, identical to that usually
found in North Italy. Whereas the sites of which we have just spoken come under the
Magdalenian or Azilian civilizations unknown in the east of the Alps. The Montgenevre pass
was thus crossed circa 10.000 before our era by some hunters coming from the plain of the
Po River.
The last hunters in the Alps.Glacial times are over and the Holocene begins with the climatic
sequences identified by the pollen analyzes: Pre-Boreal (from 8.200 to 6.800) and Boreal
(from - 6.800 to - 5.500). The Alps become more attractive with their game abundance under
a climate which becomes milder.In the seventh and sixth thousand years before the Common
Era, each side of the alpine arc develops, during the Mesolithic era, a civilization
characterized by its small flints of geometrical shape. The hunters of small game (birds,
rodents) install encampment above the limit of the forest (almost identical to that today) either
in the open air, or sheltered by large rocks, often close to the passes, the passage ways; and
also on the flint layers. They were not very well known, still a few years ago. But the
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discoveries multiply so much in France (Chartreuse, Vercors, Taillefer massif) than in Italy
(Dolomites, Trentino) or in Switzerland, in Simmental (Bernese Oberland), where there are
sites per tens above 1500 m.
The stage thus set, after having summarily presented our distant ancestors, it is appropriate
to be concerned more precisely about their way of life now. It is by a multidisciplinary work
carried out by anthropologists, paleontologists, even some specialists in sedimentology or
palynology… that we are able to have a rather precise idea of the environment in which they
lived.
Hunting and gathering are the first livelihood of Man. These activities are directly inherited
from the animal world, particularly from that of primates. They consist in deducting from
nature what it provides spontaneously. They are previous to breeding and farming, and can
force to nomadism, if the herds which provide the main subsistence move, or if the resources
in the country are exhausted. The men therefore were hunter-gatherers until the Neolithic
revolution. i.e., they have no means of controlling nature, and had no other possibilities but
only adapting to the season cycles. We can have an idea of their way of life, for the
comparable zones of climates, by observing the last peoples of hunter-gatherers, for example
the Aborigines in Australia or the Indians of Amazonia.
Communism is the social and economic organization which was dominating all along what it
is agreed to call “Prehistory “ until the Neolithic era. i.e., at least during more than 90% of the
history of modern Man (Homo sapiens). This initial Communism concerns all the societies
known as societies of hunting and gathering, which could gather from few tens to several
hundreds, of individuals.The social relations in them are egalitarian. The division of labor in
them is “natural,” i.e., based on the bodily and intellectual capacities (on the tastes also) of
each individual. Coarsely, it results in a sexual division of tasks where man hunts big games
and carries out most dangerous tasks, and woman gathering and education of the young
children. It is also expressed in a division between age groups.But all that does not involve
the domination of old men over young people, nor of men over women.These societies,
beyond their diversity, have all a common point: they are dominated by natural factors, by
environment. All their effort strives, essentially, for being freed from this domination, in order
to improve the reproduction and living conditions of their members, from the creation of first
tools to the inventions of breeding and farming.These improvements are slow because of the
fact that nature is taken as a living being, a higher force, which gives a lot of itself for human
beings, on the condition that the latter serve it correctly. In this context, any technical
invention, to be able to be adopted, should never be regarded by the group as a
transgression of the natural order.
! --------- ------------------- --------- !
A second way of approaching the understanding of these peoples is to study the fossil
remains of them, and to seek in them the marks of diseases or the revealing signs of their
behaviors. For example, the study of the teeth wear.
Thus, by correlating the study of the environment, present plants and animals, the wear of the
teeth, the tools and their potential uses… pathologies having left traces on the fossil bones;
we arrive little by little to an increasingly precise representation of the way of life of our
ancestors.
Pathologies.During the entire rule of Homo erectus, although their fossils are relatively rare,
pathologies seem rather not very frequent, at least for those that leave osseous or articular
signs, the only ones that we can know. Almost no osteoarthritis, no osseous structural illness,
no tooth decay, but frequent periodontitis. The use of toothpicks is attested very early by
interdental wear. Very few osseous tumors are discovered.In the Middle Paleolithic, with
Homo Neanderthalensis, in a way much more frequent advanced, severe tooth decays with
periodontitis appear, some frequent osseous illnesses. It is impossible, to keep a real
scientific rigor, to ascribe a food origin to this evolution. The way of life of these men is much
closer to that of Homo sapiens of whom they are partially contemporary.
In Upper Paleolithic, Homo sapiens, similar to us in all aspects, does not show, on the
pathologic level, clear difference with his Neanderthal predecessor.
However, the absence of carrying pathologies deteriorating osseous structure, remains, in no
way makes it possible to conclude their nonexistence. The bad conservation of pathological
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bones, particularly those affected by a mineral deficiency, can be enough to explain their non-
discovery.
The small number of fossil remains discovered, the dubious conservation of the bones,
require much caution in exploiting the data of Paleolithic pathologies.
The anthropophagy in Paleolithic.In the animal kingdom cannibalism is not a very widespread
behavior. Among insects it exists only in the case of bees, in the event of food shortage, and
in the case of praying mantis. Among fish, only trout and pike eat their larvae readily.The
discovery of the first signs of anthropophagy therefore caused fierce debate. Passions now
calmed down, new archeological discoveries were made, and the abundant data from
ethnology were extended to the point of providing a significant context.
In mankind, cannibalism, if it is not the rule, is far from being exceptional. It is indeed attested
among the hunter-gatherers of most of the continents.
- In North America: Iroquois, Algonquians, Wyandots, Cree...Aztecs.
- In South America: Guayaki, Tupinambas, Tupi-Guarani.
- In Papua: Fore.
- In Melanesia: the Fataleka of Malaita.
- In Africa: Azande.
- In Siberia: Yukaghirs, Tunguses, Samoyeds, etc.
And, even more surprising fact, apart from really exceptional cases of starvation, it is never
food cannibalism, but very worked out ritual acts. Two main forms are distinguished,
exocannibalism in which they are enemies killed in a fight who are eaten, or endocannibalism
which concerns the dead members of the group, whatever the cause of their death. For
example, the Tupinambas, exocannibals, consider that revenge is complete only if their
enemy is devoured, but at the same time it is necessary to pacify the dead of the group and to
appropriate the qualities of the victim. The Guayaki, endocannibals, eat during a ritual meal
the deceased members of their group, in order to protect themselves from the harmful
influence of the soul/mind of the dead, who is considered to remain still wandering if the ritual
is not accomplished.Archeological facts, without being very numerous, form nevertheless a
whole of considerable presumptions.The first appear as soon as Middle Paleolithic, as broken
human bones bearing marks of carving, and often burned off, found in floors of housing,
among animal bones treated in a similar way. In Krapina (Croatia) in layers 3 and 4, the
remains of thirteen Neanderthals were found in a heap, broken but also partially burned off.
For their discoverer, Dragutin Gorjanovic, it is here the result of a cannibal act.To Vindija, also
in Croatia, a site dated back to the Middle Paleolithic, provided similar clues. Several isolated
pieces are also pointed out: Isturitz (France, Pyrenees atlantiques) a fragment of the top of a
skull has slash marks made with a flint knife, at Predmost (Moravia) a skeleton has carving
marks. In Tautavel (Pyrenees-Orientales), a broken skull of Homo Erectus was found in the
middle of food waste (ground G - 450.000 years). In the Baume (cave) of Moula-Guercy
(French department of Ardeche), some Neanderthalian human bones (six individuals,
including two adults and two children from 15 years to 16 years old) broken but also showing
marks of carving, appear among obvious food waste.In Maszycka (Polish Silesia), the
remains gathered, but incomplete, of 16 individuals, were found. They showed chips, and
chewing marks which, according to their discoverers, could not be attributed to carnivorous
animals. The victims would have been beheaded then dismembered out of the cave; some
bones would have been brought back then buried after a ritual meal. In the Large Sinkhole of
Atapuerca (Spain - 800.000 years), some signs of consumption of human beings were also
noted : beheading marks, butchery signs (percussion marks and chop marks) on 50% of the
remains, intentional fractures of bones as hand made.Why eat a fellow creature?Altogether, if
the existence of cannibalism in Paleolithic cannot be objectively proven, it can, however,
taking into account the ethnological context, being regarded as possible or probable. It was,
of course, a ritual cannibalism. The available documents do not make it possible, of course, to
decide between exo and endo cannibalism.The cannibalism practice seems very old, it
concerned as well primitive Sapiens as Neanderthals, perhaps even Erectus. The well-dated
documents are not, on the other hand, sufficiently numerous to make possible to follow the
disappearance of this behavior, all the more so as some signs seem to exist for late periods,
Mesolithic era and Neolithic era. Cannibalism therefore would be neither an archaic sign, nor
a manifestation of savagery.
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Food in Paleolithic.The knowledge of what was eaten during Paleolithic is now rather precise.
Very many studies based on the analysis of behaviors (particularly of hunting), and the
exploitation of the resources, of the leftovers… make it possible to define food conditions.We
will tackle here only the Middle Paleolithic and the Upper Paleolithic which match to food
conditions we can try to reproduce today.The people are then all hunter-gatherers, therefore
strictly limited to the exploitation of natural resources, with very limited possibilities of
preservation of foodstuffs, because of their non-settling way of life.The food resources are, on
the one hand, game, on the other hand, plants.The men in Paleolithic cut and tear off the
plants, dig up the roots, gather fruits and berries. This resource was used in a variable way
according to the harshness of the climate. The hot and cold, as well as dry and wet, climatic
variations, indeed led important variations in the vegetable cover. Nevertheless, at any time,
some edible plants were present in the inhabited areas, what makes the data retained for
food in Paleolithic, coherent.Vegetable consumption among hominids represented, in Lower
Paleolithic, the major part of their food. But in Middle Paleolithic and Upper Paleolithic, men
will gradually reduce its proportion in their food intake. It will increase again in the Neolithic
era with agricultural production. It should be noted that vegetable ration will never be
nonexistent, even among the Inuit.It is necessary to also emphasize that in Upper Paleolithic,
climatic variations led to extremely harsh periods, known as glacial, during which it is
estimated that animal products represented in fact 80% or more food intake.The plants, apart
leguminous plants and nuts, are low carbohydrate. A diet made up of 35% of animal products
and 65% of vegetable products matches 700 grams of meat and 1.300 grams of plants, with
an energy intake represented, for 50%, by carbohydrates. If the diet comprises only 20% of
vegetable products, we arrive to 1.700 grams of meat for 400 grams of plants, the
carbohydrate providing only 14% of daily energy. The metabolism is then reoriented towards
gluconeogenesis from lipids.
This diet comes nearer that of the hunter-gatherers in the Far North.The food fibers, brought
by the only plants, among the contemporary hunter-gatherers, represent from 30% to 50% of
the dry weight of the studied coprolites. The analysis of these data makes it possible to
determine that, for a food intake bringing 65% of the energy from vegetables, fibers represent,
according to the plants, from 37 grams to 60 grams. These elements make it possible to
consider that Paleolithic had, even from this point of view, a satisfactory food.Among the Inuit
for whom 90% of the energy intake is of animal origin, the absence of vegetable fibers is
perfectly compensated by the absorption of non-digestible biopolymers (small bones, teeth,
leather, hairs, skin, fish scales ...).The vegetable proteins are not to neglect in this approach
of food. However, they are of less good quality than those of animal origin and for certain
amino-acids (tryptophan, lysine, and methionine) the plants are very poor. However, the
association of several sources can partially compensate for this deficiency.
No unbiased sign enables us to consider that honey was a source of sugar in Paleolithic.
We can therefore very legitimately consider that the food intake of human beings was to be
very different from that we know today. The meat products were to be largely majority and
perhaps even, as among today Inuit, in glacial periods, to represent the almost total of the
nutritive intake.
The game.Fire increases, by dehydration, the calorie content of meat and its protein content,
without lowering too much its lipid content. The collagen fibers are changed into gelatin and,
of course, amino-acids, carbohydrate and some lipids, interact, thus creating the flavors and
the taste of roasted meat. From its appearance, meat consumption therefore radically
changed.Theoretical models were developed, taking into account environmental
conditions.There would be thus periods of abundance during which a selective hunting would
be performed, on one or two species only, with, moreover, consumption of adults (fattier than
the young) and prevalence of a sex (for the same reasons). By opposition, during the
shortage time, hunting loses its selective characteristic. Very many species are hunted,
without reference of age or sex, small fauna being also eaten then. The splitting up of the
bones for extraction of marrow is systematic, and the epiphyses very rich in lipids are seldom
found.But the proportion of the energy intake represented by meat products seems to be
remained between 35% and 50% for the groups studied in moderate climatic period
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(interglacial). Consumption was therefore always higher than that of the Neolithic era or that
of today, with animals having meat richer in proteins than breeding animals. And during
glacial periods, meat food could form 80% even more of food intakes.The game has,
moreover, lipids content always lower than breeding animals. The animal fats also vary with
the seasons, the rutting and the swimming up in the rivers of salmons making these animals
lose for instance 25% of their body mass.This aspect of the energy intake is far from being
negligible, because it leads to the selection of the parts of animals having to be eaten or
carried in the housing. There are indeed the best quarters which were most eaten.In the same
way, the search for osseous marrow, very rich in lipids, is attested by the almost systematic
breaking of long bone in certain layers. The epiphyses of the long bones, that we rarely find,
are also used by crushing, as that was proven for old encampments in North Alaska. It is
possible that Paleolithic men did in the same way, including while making meat stock.It should
be noted that paleopathology reveals no sign of gout, in spite of the strong game eating.
The egg consumption left no trace. It is therefore not possible to mention it. In the same way,
the absence of breeding does not make it possible to imagine milk consumption other than
anecdotal, at the time of the hunting of a nursing female, for example.The paleoenvironmental
data do not make it possible to mention problems of water restriction, the more so as the
housing were always established near water resources.Salt, for a ration to 35 % of meat
products, would bring an equivalent of 1, 7 grams of sodium chloride per day, which is
sufficient. The fruits, nut, vegetables and roots, were generally eaten a few hours after being
gathered, having undergone little transformation, even none, and often raw. We can therefore
deduce from it that vitamins and minerals intakes largely exceeded our advised daily intakes.
In conclusion.If an animal species could persist and have an evolution which gave it
“advantages” compared to other species, it is that it enjoyed a bundle of supporting factors.
Hominization is therefore the evidence, by its current end, that human beings, without
controlling their environment as they did from the Neolithic era, could well use nature wealth
for their gain. Their relative fragility, their vulnerability, were compensated for by three great
factors.
- Tool making.
- Fire control.
- Social life.
-A fourth factor is to be added, related to the very simple way of life of our ancestors, it is their
food. This one, natural by definition, varied but strictly tied to the seasonal changes,
undoubtedly strongly meat-based and with periods of nearly exclusive meat consumption,
was an undeniable factor of the ubiquitous development of our species.
Such is therefore the legitimization of the diet known today as “Paleolithic,” which is only
taking into account of the necessary harmony between Man and Nature as well as fulfillment
of his needs by natural foods.If the 19th century viewed a little despisingly this way of life
considered to be primitive, we realize today that in addition to the fact that it informs us about
the beginnings of mankind, it proved to be not very restrictive. And enabled it to develop a
cultural life in harmony with its environment. Some people idealize even this way of life. What
is certain it is that the upheavals of our society in the fields of food, environment, pollution,
failure to respect nature, farming and breeding, lead us to a general discomfort.
- Syndrome of chronic tiredness.- Generalized stress.And yet what we seek all if it is not well-
being and health, the whole of a healthy and well-proportioned body.
The Paleolithic diet points out the way leading us to this objective.We forgot bases of life and
nature, and this booster shot is necessary to find again the way leading to them.The main
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conclusions we can deduce from the analysis of Paleolithic diet, rich in proteins, in fibers, low
in sugars and in certain greases, are indeed that it would be appropriate…
For meat.
- To increase their total proportion at least to 35% (even well beyond) of our energy intake,
but while choosing the least fatty meat.
- To increase the proportion of wild meat, game having to be favored, to restrict breeding
meat.
- To increase also the fish consumption, even of those which are regarded as fat.
- And finally to avoid eating them with more or less sweetened sauces, mustards or
mayonnaise.
For vegetables.
- To diversify their consumption.
- To increase the portion of vegetable fibers.
- To favor the berries and dry fruit consumption.
- To increase the proportion of vegetables rich in cellulose and starch.
- While avoiding the carbohydrate intake they can represent.
For lipids.The ration must be moderate, bring little saturated fatty acids, but much
polyunsaturated fatty acids.
For carbohydrates.Fast sugars must be reduced and ideally eliminated, in the food intake, in
favor of the slow sugars brought in moderate quantity.
Such an upheaval of our food is, of course, rather difficult to implement nowadays. But some
therapies of Paleolithic diet can be envisaged at certain times of the life of individuals.It is
necessary to go to seek foods rich in vitamins while eating 5 to 10 fruits and vegetables per
day, foods rich in minerals and trace elements through the consumption of sea products. And
particularly of shells and crustaceans rich in zinc or selenium.But we should not forget the
mineralized water for calcium and magnesium intake, of which the digestion is higher than
cow's milk.However, concerning micronutrients, our production mode changed so much that
compared to the quantity of current food ingested (2 200 kilogram calories for a man instead
of 3.500 kilogram calories during Paleolithic) we have no longer what is advisable.The taking
of a nutritional supplement would be necessary therefore every day.On the other hand, with
this diet, it is not necessary to count the grams of carbohydrates nor even the calories which
you consume. The main rule is to cease eating as soon as you are filled up.The Paleolithic
diet can therefore help us by showing us the way of the balance necessary to us for our well-
being and our health. But it should be adapted by having recourse to correct supplements, the
accumulation of risks in our society being no longer the same as 15.000 years ago.It is
therefore advised to allow oneself two or three “Neolithic” meals per week in order to avoid
the deficiencies.Last question finally: our ancestors did eat raw or cooked?Cooking appeared
in Paleolithic, approximately 40.000 years ago, but it seems that our ancestors ate especially
raw food, cooking having probably had only a limited role. It would have mainly concerned
meat and fish, and would have been relatively short.
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PREHISTORIC PEOPLES' SPIRITUALITY.
By Leo Marillier (1862-1901). Religion of uncivilized peoples.
"Now the Lord God [in fact a plural in the Hebrew text: Elohim] had planted a garden in the
east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God [Elohim]made all kinds
of trees grow out of the ground, trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the
middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge...but from the tree of
the knowledge you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will know the death."
(Sumerian fable).
The earth which quakes, which is split, which gulps the man and his work; the water which
raises and floods or drowns everything, the storm which carries everything away in front of
it… Here what for a long time we know to be due to the displays of other living beings; and
finally the painful enigma of death, this death to which no remedy was found up to now and
undoubtedly will never be. With these forces, nature stands up against us, sublime, cruel,
unappeasable, it points out our weakness, our distress, from which we hoped to shy away
thanks to the toil of our civilization… These vague Powers, these living and moving forces by
which Man felt surrounded, it is extremely probable that, first of all, he did not personalize
them rather completely to ascribe to them as regards him benevolence or anger. They
appeared to him frightening, but not hostile. And in addition, he did not imagine, as much as it
seems, how he could have shied away from their action or fought against them; he did not
have enough clear idea of them to imagine what weapons he could use. Therefore he was not
in front of them despicably afraid as man can be in front of a quite defined danger.This fear
which knocked down and which still fells down entire tribes of modern savages to the foot of
their sanguinary god-or-devil, whatever his name (Yahweh Sabaoth or Allah). But, as much
as we can speculate about it, he felt this anxiety. This disconcerting waiting, this vague terror,
which, combined with the feeling of the boundless force and omnipresence of superhuman
beings, of the narrow dependence on which the individual is regarding these Powers which
surround him and which he does not know; but always sees ; generate in the soul r in the
minds properly religious emotion.
This emotion, is the matter to which the idea that the human will then succeed in getting of the
world which surrounds him and of himself will impose a form. As soon as he is able to make,
of reflection, a complete enough training to think these images in coherent units. And to pay
enough attention to them so that they remain, similar to themselves, in his recall become able
to distinguish from each other memories, and to let them no longer to be confused. Nature will
consequently appear to him as made up of living beings that he will not be able to design in
another way than himself; it will not be peopled with soul/minds, but alive and behaving, or
rather made of living beings, of which arbitrary and capricious will regulate the run of events
that will be only their actions.Living will be the forest! Living will be the fertile making and
devastating waters, living the nourishing and fatal plants, the booming sea, living the hard and
strong rocks, agile the fire, the wind which breaks the trees, the luminous sky, the loaded with
rain clouds, the sun devouring and creating. And it is not life only that he will therefore
attribute to these beings and various objects; it will be volition similar to his and intelligence of
the same order, therefore the same feelings, the same desires, the same affections, the same
hatreds. These attributes of the human being, first of all, he will invest with them the animals,
which do not appear him separate from Man by an impassable barrier and which he often
imagines as more intelligent and more powerful than him.Nobody has more successfully than
Guyau (1854-1888) characterized this moment of religious evolution.The cause which
produces the movement among them being a desire, they suppose that any movement in
nature, like the movement of men and animals, is also explained by some desire, some
intention. Their idea of nature is therefore anthropomorphic, as will be that which they will
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imagine for God or the Demiurge later. The word “panthelism” of Greek origin expresses very
well this state of human intelligence; which, first of all, sees in nature not some soul/minds
more or less distinct from bodies, but simply some intentions, desires, wills inherent to the
very objects.In short, the simplest or most primitive representation, that Man can imagine
about nature, it is not to see in it phenomena depending on each other; but some wills more
or less independent and endowed with an extreme power, being able to act the ones on the
others, and on us. The world is understood as a set of wills, physically and socially
powerful.But they are not only objects as well as beings in nature that Man, at this stage of
his development, imagines as wills, they are also actions, because they seem to him like
some objects. The display of any physical or mental energy is accompanied by variations of
emotional state, which cause, in turn, the apparition of such or such images. These images
symbolize the act, represent it, and in a way embodies it. And so, as the acts, the passions
which move men, the desires who attract them, are personified or take tangible shapes, and
that spontaneously, without any aware and thoughtful tendency to allegory takes
place.Language besides completes the work begun with images and emotions, and confers to
these beings of thought a whole and entire reality or almost. Consequently, Man himself, like
whole nature, is in his own eyes a kind of Republic of Powers more or less confusedly
represented, but, however, identical in their appearance to the multiple objects which appear
in their former perception. And these objectified images; he feels them as being forces, as
being energies. From there is made more complete the identification between the nature
which surrounds him, and the man who lives, on it, but also in it.
We will never insist too much, besides, on the crucial role played, in the development of the
notion of life of things; by the knowledge the primitive ones have of animals, and the design
they imagine of their intimate nature. They are too similar to man in all their steps, in all their
manners of behaving, with him and in relation each other; so that he could think of arranging
them in a category different from that in which he placed himself. However, they differ, at such
point of him some of them at least - by their appearance; that they hardly seem to him
related more closely but plants, water which moves and which speaks too, and rocks in which
something of his shape sometimes seems to remain. It is a reason, moreover, so that he
estimates that all these beings are, like him, living beings, and living beings who want.
According to a very perspicacious remark of the great Scottish philosopher that was Edward
Caird, man at the same time designed himself in the image of nature objects, and imagined
nature in the image of his will; things and men are of comparable essence, invested with the
same attributes, with powers of a similar quality, if not of the same extent.[Editor’s note. And
that also regards quite obviously the god-or-devil of the three monolatries, who is only a
superman!]What it is important to notice here; it is that these attributes and these powers,
according to such an idea of the world, are very different from the attributes and from the
human powers such as we design them nowadays. They are much more varied, much more
numerous. The action of Man , according to them, runs in a thousand fields we know now
withdrawn from the influence of his will. He can act on rain and clouds, wind and sun, make
the plants grow or the leaves be dried out ; he can to his liking take the shape which suits him
or impose it on others.The primitive man believed he can do all that, and the other wills,
similar to his, of which the world thread is made, also could do it, according to him, quite in
the same way.For the primitive man, all the beings are magicians, but they are magicians with
unequal power and also with unequal science. The natural gift, the mana which is not got (the
word mana indicates in Melanesia the whole of the natural and supernatural gifts of which a
man is endowed, the set of the powers over men and things which belong to him) as well as
the knowledge, of good rules, of good recipes; such are the elements which make possible
some persons to command supreme thunder,ocean, animals in the forests. For the primitive
man, there is in phenomena, no rule, and no uniform succession. The idea of natural law is
absent from his mind. Causality, such as he succeeds to imagine it, is a capricious and
dubious causality. He does not imagine the universe as a super-unit of which all the parts are
bound; but as a collection of persons always in fight and of whom sometimes one overcomes,
sometimes the other, without it is possible to know in advance to whom the advantage will
remain. He sees it as given up to the unceasingly changing impulses of never bridled
passions. And no being is subjected to a part fixed and determined in advance, no being has
special function, for which it would be made exclusively. It can do everything, and that all the
more surely as a more effective virtue, that a higher mana, is in it. Each “will,” each “power,”
appears in a thousand different ways, and no particular field is assigned to him with the
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exception of all the others. The “life,” which is within yews and oaks, and makes their
branches become green, predicts the future, cures diseases, makes the rain fall or makes the
animals perish; and that not because it usurped a power which did not belong to it, but only
because a living being, can make its life radiate everywhere. And these powers, man ascribes
them to himself as to other beings in nature, and he uses them; if he often fails in his
enterprises, he is not astonished; he knows that they are not equally granted to everybody,
and the explanation is enough for him. The magicians never hesitate to try everything: they
believe in all sincerity to influence the stars and the course of the seasons; our distant
ancestors ascribe an effective power over the elements, to certain members of their tribes. If
the shaman fails to reach the objective he imposed on himself, he concludes from it not that
his enterprise was out of the circle of the things which are accessible to the power of a human
being; but only that he came to run up against stronger, more learned, more skillful, than him.
First worships. We can consequently understand what connections had to be established
between the god-or-demons, who were only most powerful among these beings of whom the
world was made up, and men. Or rather between men and living nature, of which in turn they
were to seek to win over the good graces, and to bend to their numerous wills. This
benevolence of gods, man can gain it, either by actual services, or while contracting with
those of whom he wants to ensure protection, an alliance which makes them become with
him, members of the same body; and binds them to him by the narrow obligations that the
collective awareness imposes to men of the same clan, of the same family, and later of the
same city.In addition, among these frightening powers, which surround Man in all directions,
and wrap him with their ceaseless activity as with an invisible network with small mesh sizes;
there are many of them he hardly succeeds in recruiting to work for him, of which he cannot
make his allies or his protectors, that he does not manage to win to his interests, by gifts or
homage; these, he will at least try to prevent them from acting, to keep them in inactivity, in a
kind of neutrality as regards him; sometimes by unceasingly increased offerings, sometimes
by practicing over them a magic coercion.There exist besides cruel gods, fierce gods, whose
fury never calms down, who are delighted by the sufferings of men; and of whom man can
divert anger one moment only by offering them, as in a bloody atonement, still new victims.
But these very god-or-demons are not either, cut and dried God-or-demons, their ferocity is
not without having exceptions and slight differences, it is not developed on everybody in the
same way. These terrible god-or-demons have favorites, and the tribute you pay them does
not go without the secret hope to ensure their frightening friendship. Lastly, it should not be
forgotten that if what you can expect, first of all, from a superhuman guard, it is that he wants
to protect you, it is not less necessary than he can do it effectively; and the support that he
gives you will be all the more valuable as he too will be more robust, more vigorous, more
intelligent, more energetic. The obvious consequence is that it is necessary to feed him as
copiously as possible, and to let him lack nothing.
Two elements are always to be taken into account at that time: the very person of the
operator, and the actions he performs. Some words, some gestures, some practices, have,
themselves and independently of the quality of the person who utters them or carries out
them, an effective virtue. They act “ex opere operato” it will be said later in Christianity. The
dances which are carried out at the time to leave for hunting or warlike expeditions, and in
which the movements of animals or the flight of enemies are mimicked; the agrarian and
fertilizing rites of every kind, the ceremonies celebrated by rainmakers. Not forgetting the
practices of bewitchment and all these which are related to them; through which you can
strike down with death or make become sick those you want to harm, or even to doom them
to suffering and misery, and particularly the defixiones.
N.B.“Defixio” is a Latin word indicating initially the fact to plant a nail, then the magic
operation through which you thus torture a substitute (for example a lead plate) while hoping
to cause the same nuisances to the enemy of whom you strongly thinks. This magic
procedure, such as we perceive it in Greece and in Rome, includes the written setting, on the
tablet, of the name of the concerned enemy. The written down text can be developed besides
with the invocation of supernatural powers, supposed to implement this curse, and various
specifications relating to the reasons of the sentence or the various torments that will be used
as punishment. It is a magic type of procedure which is attested through the whole
Mediterranean basin, during Antiquity.If in certain cases (in Chamalieres in France for
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instance) the high knowers believed to have to use the Celtic language in this intention; it is
perhaps because they delivered the magic message to Celtic supernatural entities, on Celtic
sites.Let us not forget also the potions through which you can force somebody to love. The
multiple recipes of popular medicine, the rites of safeguarding and purification as well as
exorcisms of which meticulous achievement holds off the dangerous influences, or at least
makes it possible to be freed of them. The wearing of amulets which protect against the jinx
and ensure success in one's enterprises. Among these ceremonial practices, some of them
are so powerful that they act on the very course of stars or supremely rule over winds and
seas.Sometimes they act directly through their own virtue: then they produce the expected
effect without the mediation of a superhuman character (ex opere operato). And it is the case
for instance, of most of the rituals performed by the Australian natives in order to make the
animals of which they eat the meat, multiply; of the practices used by the African rainmakers,
of the recipes of medical magic, of the love potions, of all at a distance murders, that wizards
try.Sometimes they develop a forcing action on a god-or-demon, a star, an animal, on the
land, on the deified sky or sea; on a being, in a word, invested with a superhuman power, a
power generally much higher than that of the magician; and thus force them to obey his
desires, to do what he wishes. It seems that it is there the interpretation it is necessary to
give, of numerous ritual sacrifices, and we could uphold with very strong arguments that it
was in this way the Brahmanic sacrifice had to be understood. The Mongolian shamanism,
the practices of the Inuit angekoks, of the Maori tohungas, of the American Indian jossakeeds,
provide us examples very clear of this second class of rituals. It should be noticed that
talismans are closely connected with this group of practices. They are indeed precisely some
objects in which a particular property lies; which gives control over a soul/mind or over a
group of soul/minds or, more generally, of superhuman beings, and makes it possible to chain
them to one’s service.Although all these ritual acts cannot be indifferently performed by the
average man; and that some of them require even imperiously, to be usefully performed, that
the celebrating person is imbued with a sacred nature, or is in determined conditions of legal
and ceremonial purity; that he undergoes some initiation ordeals or is especially prepared to
discharge his frightening function of the master of God-or-demons; by means of a patient
subjection to a strict austerity, prolonged during a more or less extended period: they always
produce certain and powerful effects, by the only fact that they were performed. Doesn't one
say yet among certain Christians that the sacraments confer grace ex opere operato (by the
power of the sacramental rite completed), and not by the saintliness of the priest
himself?These effects besides can be harmful to the person who officiates and turned over
against him; for example, if he had omitted the necessary precautions, and could not protect
himself against the dangers which surround the creation or the setting free of a supernatural
force. There are some of them, besides, for the achievement of which no particular quality of
their agent is required, and it is especially these which act directly on the phenomena without
the intervention of any superhuman character.But if the magic incantations and acts have by
themselves effectiveness or value, there are, in addition, certain individuals who are invested
with a magic power. Who command the elements, who cure the diseases, thanks to a simple
laying on of their hands on the patient, who make through their words the sun shines, or the
leaves grow, who can kill with a gesture, who, at will, take the shape of such or such animal,
who can, with a word, give back the life to a dead.And of whom the only presence in the army
brings victory, the only presence in a community of farmers brings fertility for the fields. This
force, this virtue, is an individual gift inherent in the person. A gift like agility in race, muscular
strength, acuteness of sight or profundity of intelligence; and of which the possession confers
some privileges on whom is invested with it, sometimes very extensive, as well as the
exercise of a real power on all those who surround him.
And in turn this mana, which makes a man more than a man, who ranks him, if not because
of the extent of his powers, at least because of their nature, with the god-or-demons; results
either from the fact that a greater one than him, a divine or a half-divine being, lives in him; or
directly from his own nature which equates him with the Powers of which the arbitrary will
rules and regulates all things. Of these men, of whom any action is a magic act, the ones are
the receptacles of a god, others some god-men. Still more than magicians, they are some
thaumaturges, some makers of wonders. But frequently, there are these very gifts, with which
they are invested and which appear through some marvelous manifestation, which designates
them for the sacred functions of which the exercise will confer them an increase in power.If
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certain objects, certain plants, certain animals, certain places, have a magic power and
property, it is also; either because a god-or-demon is in them, a god-or-demon who passes
his nature on them and turns them into his instruments; or because they are themselves
reservoirs of force, and of effective energy; visible shape of wills which move the things, as
the will of a man moves his limbs and which cause at their liking the events with which the
thread of the universe is woven. These beings and these objects have many powers,
sometimes specialized in a way, and adapted to a single aim, sometimes and most often
undefined and able to produce most various results; these powers, moreover, do not lie only
in the entire being or object, but jointly in each of its parts, in each of its fragments; hence
consequently the belief in the magic power of the torn off flakes of a sacred stone, of leaves
or branches of a divine tree, of water drawn from a spring in which a life more than human
lies.These agents of marvelous effects, men, animals, fountains, objects or plants, osseous
remains of holy men, are not regarded as supernatural or preternatural by those who believe
in them. And that simply because the notion of supernatural or preternatural one; such as we
understand it; lacks entirely, not only to the “uncivilized peoples“ but to all the societies which
did not manage yet to have,of Nature, a scientific or a half-scientific idea. The miracle is not
for them the violation of a law of nature, but only the appearance of a force, a power, which is
out of the ordinary. It is for them a sign of the presence of the god-or-demon, but a sign as
little “miraculous,” in the modern sense of the word, as the events which always recur
uniformly; like sunrise and sunset, seasonal cycle, birth and death of animals or men; the river
which runs. The corn which grows in furrows is, like the resurrection of a dead, the
appearance of a divine life, less rare perhaps and less powerful, but identical in its essence.
The notion of supernatural one was formed only at a time very late to that when the nature
religions have formed; it could appear only with the idea of the transcendence of God-or-
demons, and especially with the idea of a Cosmos ruled from outside by wills of
incommensurable power compared to human will. In order it grew in the souls and minds, the
condition almost necessary was that the belief in the power of these shamans had decreased
in them. And that the world seemed them no longer a society of living beings, endowed with
conscious wills, livened up by violent and capricious passions (animism), but a society of
entities that incantations and spells could force to acts they did not wish . If these beings and
these objects, which are the spontaneous agents of nature’s life and the docile or rebellious,
instruments, of the desires of shamans, are not supernatural beings nor supernatural objects;
they have, however, when their action is particularly effective and powerful, a frightening
characteristic. In them resides the fertilizing and destroying force, the force which creates or
kills, the force dangerous for whom is weak and clumsy, for who cannot handle it or capture it
to his advantage. Sometimes they are considered essentially as sacred, sometimes as
impure, but these two notions, as Robertson Smith, and J.G. Frazer showed, confused in the
beginning, differentiated only slowly one from the other. Reservoirs of divine force, they can
through their contact or their influence to put all the weak beings, like children and women, in
true dangers. Hence the taboos, the ritual prohibitions which surround, like a safety net,
chiefs, wizards, priests, members of secret religious societies, objects as well as sacred
places. The part played by these taboos is besides double. If they protect against the force
which emanates from the chief or from the wizard, the members of the tribe; they also
safeguard from harmful contacts these marvelous and half-divine beings, whose health, life,
and perfect entirety, are the very condition of prosperity, even of the existence of the society;
which has in them his visible and tangible sign. But the objects as well as the beings which
are considered to be unclean are unclean only of a sacred impurity; for those who know how
approach them with the appropriate ritual precautions; they are on the contrary magic
instruments having an extreme power.
To understand well the meaning of all these prohibitions, it is necessary to remind here of the
theory to which we referred higher, and which is based on the notion of continuity of life. It
consists mainly in the double idea that every action exerted on part of a being or of an object
(and the name is regarded as a part of the entity in question) is exerted on the entire object or
being; consequently that to have a portion of an object, a part of a being, i.e., for example its
name, it is to have already control over it. And moreover, that the force of each being lying
entirely where there is one of its parts, this last one can act in its entirety, in a harmful or
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useful way, where a fragment of its totality is; where, for example, its name is uttered or
invoked. There is no need to insist and see that it is in ideas of this kind that the practices of
bewitchment and the most part of the recipes in use for love potions, find their justification. To
imitate an act, it is already producing this act; to pour water on a green branch, here is a sure
means of causing, in times of drought, a fertilizing rain; and in order that clouds pile up in the
sky, it is enough to throw in the air a handful of dust. Let us notice nevertheless that these
imitative practices are almost always accompanied also by an incentive. That the personality
of the one who perform them is not indifferent to their success; that ritual gestures intended to
free a divine force are carried out many times; that one has recourse rather often to powerful
spells, like bloodshed, during these ceremonies. But the imitation of an act is the very act, as
the picture, the reflection or the shadow, it is the being, itself; if you exert a magic action on
the simulated act, it will be necessarily reflected in the real act.In the beginning, prayer is not
a simple request and the sacrifice an offering prayer, to pray it is initially to name the god-or-
demons and consequently to put them in one’s temporary dependence; hence the importance
to know the true name of the divine beings, and the jealous care with which their worshipers
hold it secret. This evocatio deorum remains in all the liturgical songs of litany type, and it is
an idea of the same nature which leads to the mechanical and continuous repetition of a
divine name, sometimes also associated with a request formula; considered, at the origin, as
a coercion formula.To sacrifice, it is essentially, at the origin, to set free, by the death of a
victim and identified with its life, a force which will act on the god-or-demons, to submit them
to the will of the sacrificing person. The two ceremonial acts, in which each worship can be
summarized, are therefore, strictly speaking magic acts, which are not intended to be
attractive for the god-or-demon, to win his benevolence or to ease his anger; but to reduce
him to the inaction if he is hostile. Or to make him, willy-nilly, the assistant and almost the
instrument of the sacrificing person.Our ancestors attribute to their god-or-demons the very
passions which liven up them; they ascribe to them the needs they feel and, strange thing,
they believe all or almost all, that man can help the superhuman beings to meet these needs.
Thus man keeps them therefore in his dependence, in a way: if they are the agents of his
prosperity or of his misfortune, the masters of his life, it is from him that they expect their
subsistence. There can be therefore between them and him help exchange. It is signed
between the god-or-demon and his dagolitoi (his faithful) a kind of contract. He protects them,
he ensures the fruitfulness of their fields, the fertility of their women, he gets for them success
in large hunting and in wars, he makes them agile, intelligent, crafty and strong; in exchange
they feed him.It seems besides that is not to conquer their benevolence that man, first of all,
fed God-or-demons, but to make them more robust and more vigorous. To put them better in
position to discharge functions which fall to them. And it happens that we triumph over our
enemies, that we kill the game in abundance during hunting, that the wombs of the women of
the tribe are fertile, and that fields give abundant harvests. Then man ascribes to the god-or-
demons the credit of all these successes: if they were hostile, man is grateful to them to be
remained neutral; if they were benevolent, man is more grateful to them to have been the
agents of this prosperity. A kind of friendship is established between the superhuman
members and the human members of this mutual assistance company; and it frequently
happens that the meals served to the god-or-demons as well as the gift offered to them, are
as much a gratitude mark as a price paid in advance for help which is sought. In the prayer
then, thanksgiving doesn’t take a long time to mingle with requests. But a god-or-demon who
is loved and who is feared, a god-or-demon with whom one enters no longer into conflict, to
whom one submits; but that one seeks to win over; a god-or-demon one imagines at the
same time as very similar to oneself and incomparably more powerful; it is precisely the god-
or-demon who can become the object of true worship.It is there what makes it possible to
understand that, in spite of their religious inferiority, their practical superiority ensured the
magic worships, in many cases, the triumph we know [see our essay against Judaism,
Christianity and Islam]. And that, moreover, almost everywhere incantations remained beside
prayers, often so closely mingled with them that we know no longer too much if in this case
we are faced with a praise anthem, or with an ancient evocatio deorum.Hence too, expiatory
sacrifices intended to calm their anger and to get from them, not only that they do not strike
the people, but also that they do not give up their people. As well as the numerous purification
ceremonies and magic or ritual protection, which have as an aim to liberate the country from
diseases, misfortunes and harms of any kind, which haunt it; but also to draw aside from the
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sanctuaries of God-or-demons, and from the celebration of sacrifices, the evil powers of
which the presence would annoy the protectors of the clan or of the tribe; and could make
them leave, for a quieter place, the one where they came and receive as usual offerings that
people brought to them.
When they are the great cosmic god-or-demons of sky, sun, sea, or the mother earth, one
fears no longer to see them fleeing. But it is feared and rightly that the proximity of these
nuisances displeases them. That these negative powers soil the sacrifice meats, and that
breaking off happens; between these magnanimous dispensers of life, and those who try by
the bloody immolation of a victim over their altar, and the clear flame that libations make
shine, to cause as well as to pay at the same time, their kind deeds and their
godsends.Among the beings invested with a superhuman power, to which primitive men, our
ancestors, pay worship, there are two categories which show naturally this characteristic.
There are, on the one hand, the men in whom as soon as this life the bright signs of a divine
force appear, the god-or-demons kings, the divine wizards; whose predominant role in certain
civilizations was clearly brought to light by J. G. Frazer in his Golden Bough.On the other
hand, the dead, idealized by the new form of life that they have taken, and who become the
protector of all their relationship, the active agents of its prosperity. But the worship of the
chiefs, in whom, if we can say, the whole life of the clan or of the tribe is embodied, so
widespread that it is, is far from being universal. And besides, in spite of the control they often
exert on the elements, their power is a limited power. Their designs are often thwarted by the
intervention of the great god-or-demons in whom stars, objects, natural events, are
personified. The dead, although they continue to belong to the clan, are no longer members
of it, neither on the same basis nor in the same way, that the living. And it is necessary
sometimes that ceremonies are celebrated in order to keep its entire force to the bond which
links them with their relationship. It is besides to notice that dead too have a very limited
power. That they often fight the ones against the others and that their “supernatural” or
"preternatural" force depends to a large extent, of the generosity that the living has shown
towards them; or of the abundance of meals that were served to them.Sacrifice is generally
followed by a ritual feast, thanks to which the union between the members of the clan and the
god-or-demon, still becomes narrower and more perfect. The feast gets this union by two
distinct ways: on the one hand, the god-or-demon is invited to take part in it, he sits, invisible,
among clan members, and eats with them the meat of the victim; now any commensality
creates a bond, similar to the very blood relationship, and makes the commensal or the table
companion enters, temporarily at least, the relationship of his hosts; on the other hand, when
the victim is a divine victim, the supernatural force which is in him, penetrates the entire group
of those who took part in the feast, and divided his flesh. The sacred meal makes the god-or-
demon and his worshipers becoming part of the same being, of which the common principle
of life is the very life of the god-or-demon; his blood full of properties, which flows now in the
veins of the sacrificing persons and of all those who belong to the same stock.The
communion sacrifice and the covenant meal are thus originally imagined as means of
inserting a supernatural character in a relationship, in a clan.So it is necessary to understand
the totemic sacrifice, this extremely rare type, after all, of sacrifice, and which is far away from
existing everywhere we find the set of beliefs and customs forming totemism.During the
initiation ceremonies, the life of the teenager is extracted from his body and transferred to his
totem which infuses into him, in exchange, its own life. He draws from his narrow union with
the divine animal or the sacred plant; of which life passed into him, a stronger force and
strength, which put him in a state to fight with the best chances of success against the
warriors of the rival tribes, and against the tricks of the wizards. In a totemic tribe, the totem
forms for each clan a kind of collective God-or-demon, which receives from its human
relationship some demonstrations of affection and respect; and it exchanges with them
mutual services, of which the extent is determined by a kind of contract (covenant). In certain
cases, in order that the bond, which holds united the ones with the other, the human and
nonhuman members of the clan, keeps its entire force and its entire firmness, the totem
animal, is once a year solemnly immolated. And its meat is ritually eaten by the whole group,
which forms its relationship.But there are societies whose members are in no way related to
the same ancestor, there are kinds of religious fraternities , which have in the same way
contracted a covenant with an animal or vegetable species. There is surely here an exchange
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of lives, a half-magic union between the god-or-demon and those who partially identified with
him. But the group thus made up, does not show so clearly the characteristic of a relationship.
Much less still if the deity, in whom the small religious society put its hope, is in no way a
collective deity, the whole of animals or plants having the same denomination but an
individual being, invested with supernatural aptitudes as well as with superhuman power. A
mountain, a rock, a river, the sun or the sea.In imitation of these fraternity worships, the
covenant worships of tribes, cities, or nations, seem to have become widespread. As the
feeling of the distance which separates God-or-demons from men increased; as the primitive
design of the same mana, of the same magic and divine force, having a quality everywhere
identical, scattered in the things, was attenuated or tended to be erased ; and that, under the
influence of new social institutions, which separated the chiefs and the kings from the mass of
the people, was slowly formed the notion of transcendence of its superhuman rulers
compared to the world; then was darkened the original meaning of the communion sacrifice. It
became gradually neither the necessary instrument of the establishment of a relationship
between the man and his god-or-demon; but the agent of the mystical communion with the
divine one. The intermediary between the non-religious and the sacred one, the vehicle of the
desires of the dagolitos, of his religiousness, of his confidence, and also the vehicle of the
protection granted by a supernatural divine or saint guardian, to his people. When a God-or-
Demon seems as a master, an almighty king, viewed in the image of barbarian kings and war
leaders, the communion sacrifice ceases almost being understandable. It forms hardly, then,
only the visible sign, and in a way the magic seal, of a pact, a contract, which binds the two
parties by mutual obligations; but which leaves them if not foreign, at least external one to the
other. It is under the influence of the same conditions that ateberta or offering made to a god-
or-demon, to win his benevolence, are changed into a kind of tribute which is paid to him
without he needs it; into a kind of homage required by a sovereign from his servants. It is
easy to understand that the prayer undergoes changes parallel to those of the sacrifice. In the
ritual shapes in which sacrifice became essentially an instrument of the mystical union, the
prayer too, without ceasing being a request, consists no longer in a request to get from a
god-or-demon such or such worked out advantages; in exchange for which such or such
offerings are promised to him. It tends to be reduced to an effort of the whole being, in order
to mingle with his god-or-demon and to identify with him. Because this union with a
supernatural force therefore will get to him in turn all the possessions which he would have
held much more from the arbitrary benevolence of his protector. This mystical prayer itself;
whose relationship with magic prayers, with incantations, is much narrower than that of a
request prayer; does not have a more disinterested nor a more moral characteristic than the
supplication which goes up towards the god-or-demon so that he saves his worshipers. Than
the requests mingled with promises, flattery, praises, thanks to which man hopes to get his
protection and his favors. But it is perhaps more religious or nobler. It shows more clearly the
distance which separates the man from the superhuman being in front of whom he prostrates,
himself and, however, it brings them closer, more narrowly. What the dagolitos (the faithful
one) wishes, what he hopes for, he will get it only if his god-or-demon lives in himself. It is
inevitable, when the idea he makes himself of his god-or-demon will become moralized or
spiritualized, that, become himself capable of justice, he projects into heaven his own image
endowed with an increased stature and ennobled. And identifies it with the sacred figures of
the Immortal ones. This respectful intimacy with gods of justice and truth will instill into his
soul and his mind a more delicate and higher morality. A more sacred, more individual, and
more personal at the same time, morality, than the one the hereditary deference to the social
rules, resulting from the very needs of a community life, caused in him.We hardly specified
the nature of these god-or-demons that the ritual practices were intended to put in
communication with their worshipers; because to tell the truth it was not very important, and
because, moreover, it remained, it seems, a long time unspecified. The god-or-demons, we
have mentioned above, they are the most powerful, most useful, or most dangerous, for man,
of objects, forces and events, in Nature; of the numerous beings with which its huge body is
built. In the beginning therefore they are not viewed as soul/minds, but simply as some alive
beings, in which mana of a particular excellence, lies. As some alive beings endowed with
more energetic wills, with vaster intelligence, and better informed, with powers wider and
more varied than those of the ordinary mortals. Men, in these remote periods of History,
imagine their deities in their image, and it is thus, it seems, that they viewed
themselves.When the notion of soul/mind also sometimes identified with a shade, sometimes
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also with a reflection, appeared in the consciousness, it was hardly long in being extended
and in a very natural way; in accordance with an analogical reasoning; first to animals and to
plants most probably, then to all the objects in Nature. Thenceforth, every object has a soul,
and the world is a huge society of soul/minds that act and react, the ones on the others; but
who don't inhabit always necessarily the bodies they animate, J. G. Frazer thought.The god-
or-demons, they are therefore the soul/minds of these alive beings, who were in fact already
worshiped because of the power appeared in them. And these soul/minds are designed,
either as inherent in the beings as well as the things and very narrowly combined with their
material or tangible bodies, or as external, independent, and controlling from outside the
events and the beings in which they appear. This notion of the possibility of an externality of
soul/mind led to imagine some soul/minds to whom no body corresponds, some soul/minds
which exist in themselves and for themselves. This design was corroborated by the idea that
the double of a man or of an animal, survived the destruction of its body.The dreams which
have a remarkable vividness as well as intensity, hallucinations, ecstasies and syncope,
shade, reflection on the water mirror even on every polished surface, perhaps also some facts
of telepathy; generated the idea of soul/mind. i.e., first of all, of a kind of tracing of the body,
as material as it, endowed with the same energies and subjected to the same needs. But
made of a finer, more subtle, and even in some cases, impalpable and intangible, matter. This
soul/mind therefore, it seems to him that it will make, while he lies on the ground, long trip;
since it attends scenes which happen in places extremely far away from the hut where he fell
asleep. It leaves its body and here it is motionless and powerless, it is therefore the principle
and the cause of his life. And it is to a soul/mind similar to his, to a double that man will
ascribe, by quite a natural analogical reasoning, the life of the other alive being. The power
and force which appear in other objects, in manufactured objects even, as the weapons and
tools he designs, in his own image, as moved by intelligent wills. But among men and
animals he sees in his hallucinations and his dreams, there are ones that are dead; among
objects, there are ones which were broken or destroyed: it is therefore that this double
survives being, even at the physical level.Little by little the soul/mind of the dead takes more
distinct and more precise individuality; it is no longer to the corpse, it is to the soul/mind, it is
to the double that offerings, homage and prayers go. Man still celebrates ceremonies of a
funerary nature, in a strict sense of the word, but the dead are also the object of the worship
of another nature. At home, libations are poured in their honor, they sit at the same ritual
feasts with the living, they live in the effigies that one carved or painted of their former faces,
quite as much as in their funeral relics. The old practices remain, but other practices
appeared in which the existence of a soul/mind relatively independent of the body it animated,
becomes apparent. In the image of this soul/mind of a man, some soul/minds similar and
freed, they also, from any necessary connection with a body you can touch, are ascribed to
beings and objects. Another soul/minds are imagined by analogy, to explain the phenomena
one cannot relate to a given object. Soul/minds become universal causes.This set of ideas
could not fail in reacting on the design they had of God-or-demons: it is dominated by them
that our ancestors came to imagine God-or-demons as soul/minds. First of all, they seemed
to them as soul/minds narrowly bound to objects, but these soul/minds could not preserve this
aspect of doubles of a first reality, when it was a question of the stars, the earth, the water,
the ocean; nevertheless they should, however, have to imagine them. They have not been
able to make for them another image of these soul/minds than that of living beings, like men
or animals. The soul/mind of God-or-demons therefore appeared to their consciousness in an
animal or human shape. Then these soul/minds at the origin inherent in the main elements of
nature like the sun the moon the earth the waters were torn off from them, and had conquered
in turn their individuality as their independence. Then man designed them as distinct beings,
controlling from outside natural phenomena.Without losing their natural characteristic
therefore, God-or-demons have then gradually taken an aspect increasingly more
anthropomorphic. And therefore, not only the passions and the feelings of men, but also their
needs and their desires, their way of life, were ascribed to them in the same way, and men
came to imagine divine society like a tracing of human society. They imagined its members as
being subjected to the same habits and customs, limited in their power by the same ritual
prohibitions, celebrating the same ceremonies, performing the same sacrifices. Everything is
identical, institutions, social organization, family structure and material surroundings, as well
in the tangible world as in this supernatural world which doubles it and forms its collective
yardstick as well as its life principle. Hence besides the famous formula of Ausonius: “Divinis
humana licet componere” (Eclogues. On the rationale of the libra or balance). “We may
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compare things human with divine.”It is there a way of imagining the universe and the divine
one which is at the root of all the later mythological development and which persists into the
Jewish Islamic or Christian legends.
N.B. It is enough to see at which point what is regarded as “well” or “good” in one of the three
so-called great religions (that Judaism Christianity and Islam would be according to their
sycophants) can be regarded as “evil” or as “sin” in at least one of both others; to realize that
these religions are by no means ethical religions but still religions of magic type (what is for
example a baptism or a conversion ceremony if not a magic ritual??)
!-- ------------------------------------------- -----------------------------!
This ambivalent characteristic of God-or-demons explains the ambivalent characteristic of the
myths in which the numerous incidents of their superhuman existence are told. The god-or-
demons are natural phenomena but they are also human beings; all nature events in which
they are involved become therefore human adventures and, on the other hand, superhuman
men, in relation with the men on the earth, they have a life similar to that of kings and wizards.
But even in the middle of all the strange or tragic stories worthy of a novel, in which the
imagination of our distant ancestors enlisted them, they never strip themselves of their
primitive nature. They remain, so anthropomorphized that they are, sun, moon, north wind
(Circios), sea, planet Saturn (Nycturus), storm clouds, dawn or night. And, if not the details, at
least the color of their adventures, results, to a large extent, from this characteristic.We will
not insist here on the various classes of myths, we want only to mark their place in the set of
religious phenomena, and to specify their function. Mythology is at the same time theology,
metaphysics and science. Every explanation appears in the form of a story, since the agents
who produce the nature phenomena and the beings which form its thread are alive beings,
similar in their essence to man himself and animals. And these stories are marvelous, since
their heroes are invested with powers we would describe today as metapsychic
(parapsychological). A myth, it is therefore essentially a marvelous story, explanatory of the
nature events , or of the very nature of God-or-demons. In the imitation of these fundamental
myths, other myths were worked out which do not explain something, but in which the usual
heroes of these superhuman stories appear, involved in the life of societies as well as of
individuals, unceasingly interfering in their daily life. And in these myths of the second
generation, which it would be better to call legends, the deified ancestors take their place,
beside the nature god-or-demons.Many rites consist in a mimed representation of the acts of
a god-or-demon, and of the numerous adventures in which he was involved; here worship is
not another thing only the stage setting of a legend, only a myth in action. In the beginning,
these representations themselves have an effective value, and are very narrowly linked to the
practices of sympathetic magic, to which we referred higher; later, they have only a half-
commemorative, half-mystical, meaning, and become essentially enlightenment instruments.
It is hardly necessary to point out the predominant place which they hold in the ritual of most
of the historical mass religions.
The liturgy consists, moreover, to a large extent, in more or less dramatized accounts, often
lyrical, which comment on these ceremonies and tell, either with some detail, or only by
allusion, the events that sacred gestures mime.”
Myths therefore made it possible the Man to imagine in a tangible and concrete shape, the
only one understandable for him in a certain stage of his evolution, the objects of his religious
emotions and the confused beliefs they implied. At the same time, they satisfied the need
which is obvious in every thinking mind to explain to himself the world where he lives. Today
that we know the myths of the first generation are only allegories which set in stages some
personifications, with the help of which it is tried to get a representation, that we know
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inadequate; of the divine one; we can no longer ascribe to them the historical and realistic
meaning they had for our prehistoric distant ancestors.Reflection, by working on the myths,
which reflected the manners of thinking or of believing in the former ages, indeed, as soon as
the first periods of the philosophical speculation of the high knowers of the druidiaction
(druidecht), tended to change them into allegories or into personifications, of course, charged
with symbols; because in their literal sense they met no longer the scientific requirements,
nor the religious needs, of an advanced civilization as was that of the Celts.
Leo Marillier. Religion of uncivilized peoples.
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TRUE DISAPPEARED ATLANTIS OR HYPERBOREA.
Editor’s note 1.
Analysis of La Tene Celtic art; confirmed by the observations we can make in the
Celtiberian field; states clearly that the image Celts had of their god-or-demons, was very
different from the traditional Greco-Roman design, always anthropomorphic. The La Tene
iconography appears based on the idea of that God-or-demons are able to take different
shapes, belonging as well to humans as to animals or plants. Their most original invention,
the “plastic metamorphosis” is an exceptional attempt to represent several of these shapes
assembled in a single image. This phenomenon has very remote origins.” (Venceslas Kruta.)
Editor’s note 2.Some elements are disconcerting, like the probable practice of shamanism by
the peoples of Upper Paleolithic or common points between Paleolithic images and shamanic
visions.Many caves decorated with paintings were discovered, proving that, since more than
30.000 years ago, man creates images and lives in a whole universe of symbols. But
interpretation of the aforesaid symbols did not truly progress. Today, much of researchers are
skeptical about the possibility of going beyond the collection of facts to reach a true
understanding of the meaning of art within Western prehistoric societies. David Lewis-
Williams advocates the idea that we should not give up any interpretation attempt. He gives a
general picture of current knowledge about the way of life of the hunter-gatherers who
peopled Western Europe between 35.000 and 45.000 years before our days; i.e., at the time
of the emergence of the figurative representations in the West.
Editor’s note 3.Preternatural (from Latin praeter naturalis, beyond the nature): everything
which is above the powers of a quite determined being, but does not exceed the abilities of
beings of a higher nature. Immortality for example is a property inherent with angels, because
angel is a pure spirit and the spirit is, by nature, immortal. Man on the contrary, considering
his body, is mortal. Hence it results that immortality forms a gift natural or in conformity with
his nature, for angels, but preternatural, or relatively supernatural, for men. Preternatural gifts
are present in man since his creation in the image of God. When a human being approaches
God, it happens that the Lord “activates" the germs present in him, blows on the embers
which goes up in flames then in a burning blaze: they are the great demonstrations
accompanying saints (healing, levitation, prophecies…). To lesser degrees, each one can
experience these gifts of God which sometimes appear in powerful charisma: phenomenal gift
for arts, speaking in foreign languages, brilliant intuitions, scientific discoveries. It is difficult to
describe the state of innocence lost by Adam and Eve, about which there are few assertions
in Genesis. This is why tradition characterizes this state only indirectly, while going up, from
the consequences of the sin told in Genesis 3, to the gifts received by our first parents in
order to pass them to their descendants. They accepted the natural gifts matching their
normal status of creatures and forming their own being. They also accepted the supernatural
gifts: the sanctifying grace, the deification this grace comprises, as well as the final call to the
vision of God. Tradition admits, moreover, the existence, in the Garden of Eden, of
“preternatural gifts” granted to the first man, i.e., of gifts which were not required by his
nature, but improved it, while remaining in the field of what was wanted by God during his
creation of the world and particularly of angels. These gifts were immortality, the absence of
pain or impassivity, the absence of concupiscence (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church,
376). A fourth gift, the (inborn) knowledge suitable for the state in which he was,is also
traditionally added to them.
(Comments and first manipulations of one of the three or four current mass religions
performed on the Sumerian fable about the creation of the first man by gods: the biblical
elohim. A good example of polytheism besides!).
Let us drop the chapter on the absence of concupiscence (which is explained only by the
guilt feeling which was linked to sexuality within the mind of these people of the Book, of
these people of one book).More interesting is the comment on the immortality which is
typically druidic minded (before the term was invented, of course). The fact, no of not being
able to die, but of being able not to die (posse non mori). In other words, a situation in which
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the passage into a final state does not comprise the dramatic tension peculiar to death since
the invention of Hell or of Purgatory.As for the intervention of an almighty creating God
infinitely good, etc., etc. necessary in a way to activate or reactivate these preternatural gifts,
buried in the depths of each one of us….It is up to our readers to see what they must think
about it! In what concerns us, we prefer to insist on the deep harmony with nature which was
to characterize, by definition, our distant ancestors of the primordial clan and to consider the
hypothesis of very developed animal instincts even of a "sixth sense” (comment of a man of
several books: at least 12 as the Fenians. Even better: of a man who as the ancient druid
prefers the spirit to the letter. Because nothing is worse for Man, and it is besides a true crime
against his mind, than the letter of a, moral or not, teaching, which did not know how to evolve
with its time and to adapt to it). But let us return to our sheep as my ancestors of the
Champagne region said (in the 17th century) *.
David Lewis-Williams defines the shaman as an individual endowed with particular powers
which enable him, while plunging himself in modified states of consciousness, to have
access to another reality on several levels (underground, undersea or celestial worlds…).
These states can be got, according to civilizations, through the fast, the tiredness, the
auditory stimulation (prolonged drum beats), and/or the use of psychotropic substances.He
therefore notes the omnipresence of shamanic practices in the societies of hunter-gatherers.
Certain characteristics of the cave representations seem to confirm this assumption. The
Paleolithic images have many common points with those which are caused by altered states
of consciousness. The images are placed without consideration of size or of position the ones
compared to the others, they seem “to float” freely, independently of any space reference,
and the images of animals are frequently combined with geometrical patterns reminding of
“entoptic shapes.” Entoptic phenomena are different from the optical illusions, which are
effects of perception related to the interpretation made by our brain. Most part of the entoptic
phenomena have a direct and known physiological cause. However, as the hallucination or
optical illusions, the observer of an entoptic phenomenon cannot give to others a direct view
of what he perceives (cf. on the subject the work of Jan Evangelista Purkinje).Taking into
account the age as well as the omnipresence of shamanism in the societies of hunter-
gatherers, it appears probable that a form of this spirituality was practiced by the men of
Upper Paleolithic in Europe. The sensory deprivation of caves, combined or not with other
factors, could have caused among them altered states of consciousness.According to David
Lewis-Williams, entering caves could resemble the diving in the mental vortex which leads to
the experiments and to the hallucinations of deep trance. While entering there, you went
physically and mentally into another world. This assumption can explain the use of shadows
and wall reliefs to suggest an animal. At the various stages of altered states of
consciousness, shamans could have perceived rock like a veil separating the visible world
from the world of the soul/minds, and have made the visions which they perceived beyond the
rock appear through their drawing: a little like shadow-plays in a way, but conversely, seen
from behind the screen. Representations of fingers as well as handprints (sometimes with
six fingers) coincide with some practices of societies using shamanism.
David Lewis-Williams demonstrates, by being based on two examples, the Lascaux and Le
Gabillou caves, that this theory can also give an account of the general organization of
images in caves. Spaces of entrance, where paintings, of large dimensions, are carefully
composed, could have corresponded to spaces used collectively. Other spaces, narrower,
gather more enigmatic figures, sometimes tangling up in a very dense way, and giving an
impression of confusion: they could be used by certain people within more "personal"
shamanic experiments. Lastly, the rare representations of anthropomorphic figures, often
riddled with assegais or arrows, could be representations of the suffering which accompanies
the shaman in his visions (The mind in the cave).
* Ninety-nine sheep plus one inhabitant of Champagne Province, equal a hundred animals.
! ---------------------------------------- !
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Druidism emerged [elsewhere in Central Europe] as soon as the Bronze Age, at the end of
the second thousand years before our era or at the beginning of the first. At first, Celtic kings,
like those of Ancient Rome, had priestly functions. But more and more, on serious questions
which staked the fate of the community (for example, the favorable moment to begin a war)
they called upon specialists in divination, from the aristocratic class, who observed the
position of the stars. The same phenomenon happened in other Indo-European societies,
particularly with the magi of Persia “(J.-L. Brunaux, the druids: philosophers among
Barbarians?)Important traits of all these Schools therefore, the consideration granted to the
person of the high-knower. The respect for the druid was always very great in the Celtic
world, as a direct consequence of the oral transmission, which remained, during centuries,
the only form of teaching known among them.In certain extreme cases, the high-knower was
even sometimes regarded as an embodiment of the deity himself; hence the intensity of the
reactions he caused. He was not only the go-between conveying the divine word, he was the
god-or-demon made tangible to his dagolitoi (faithful). But this respect due to the druid should
not, however, turn into idolatry (like in the case of Muslims with their prophet).
Around the seventh century before our era, legendary characters who have all the
characteristics of shamans: fast, loneliness, bilocation, ecstasy, appear in Greece.If a Greek
terminology is chosen, the expression Theios Anêr, God-Man, gives better an account, of
course, of the personality of those who belonged to this movement.Several quite precise
points characterize these men. On the one hand, they all are, with the notable exception of
Epimenides, who comes under another process, related to remote or situated on the fringes
of Hellenism, regions, i.e., in direct touch with Barbarians. It is therefore emphasized, by
reason of their geographical origin, that the irrational of these characters is regarded as
unfamiliar to Greek thought and not being able to be generated by it. It will be the same thing
with the magic later. They are also characterized by their diet. Abaris/Abarix had learned how
to do without any human food; as for Epimenides, he lived with the exception of every other
things, on a vegetable preparation containing mallow and daffodils, which had been taught to
him by nymphs. In both cases, that exceeds the framework of simple asceticism. It would
seem, but this point is far from being clarified that some ones had a tattooing, rare case in
the Greek world apart from the slaves, whereas it was widespread among nearby people. The
meaning of it could be a sign of consecration as theios anêr. As we have already noticed, it is
their power to make “travel” their soul/mind which draws especially attention. If it were still
necessary to persuade oneself about this subject, let us quote this passage of Pliny which
carries out a kind of synthesis of the phenomenon:
Such then is the condition of us mortals: to these and the like vicissitudes of fortune are we
born; so much so, that we cannot be sure of anything, no, not even that a person is dead.
With reference to the soul/mind of man [in Latin anima] , we find, among other instances, that
the soul of Hermotimus of Clazomenæ was in the habit of leaving his body, and wandering
into distant countries, whence it brought back numerous accounts of various things, which
could not have been obtained by anyone but a person who was present. The body, in the
meantime, was left apparently lifeless. At last, however, his enemies, the Cantharidæ, as they
were called, burned the body, so that the soul/mind [in Latin anima], on its return, was
deprived of its sheath, as it were. It is also stated that in Proconnesus, the soul/mind [Latin
anima] of Aristeas was seen to fly out of his mouth, under the form of a raven; a most
fabulous story, however, which may be well ranked with the one that follows. It is said of
Epimenides of Cnossus [Greek Knossos] that when he was a boy, being fatigued by heat
and walking, he fell asleep in a cave, where he slept for fifty-seven years; and that when he
awoke, as though it had been on the following day, he was much astonished at the changes
which he saw in the appearance of everything around him: after this, old age, it is said, came
upon him in an equal number of days with the years he had slept, but his life was prolonged
to his hundred and fifty-seventh year” (Pliny, Nat. Hist., VII, LIII).
We find besides this kind of miracle in the Islamic-Christian legend of the seven sleepers in
Ephesus (sura No. 18 known as sura "of the cave”), but in much stronger.
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This power makes it possible some people to know remote regions and to draw from them
some accounts; others to know Truth. In the case of Epimenides, if his legendary meeting
with Aletheia (the Truth) in a cave, symbolizes a gift of clairvoyance, similar to that of the
soothsayer, it also crowns a practice which aims to escape the time; and consequently to
reach a level of real which is defined essentially by its opposition to the world of oblivion.
When he comes into contact with Aletheia in this famous cave, Epimenides becomes familiar
with God-or-demons. The level of existence of Aletheia is that of the divine one: it is
characterized by timelessness as well as by stability. It is the level of existence of the
immutable, permanent, being, which is opposed to that of our human existence, subjected to
generation and death, eaten away by oblivion. While acting in this way, he tries to become
similar to the deity. We will see in one moment that it is there one of the great novelties it is
possible to ascribe these characters.”Various authors, by emphasizing the notable differences
between Dionysism and god-man (theios anêr), tried to give this phenomenon both a religious
and social dimension; for them indeed their action had to be also developed in the direction of
a religious Reform. This current is very close to Dionysiac current, and it could even interfere
with it: there is some shamanism, at times, in the Dionysus of the maenads. The phenomenon
takes place at a precise moment in Greek history when the Dionysiac movement was no
longer sufficient. The religious experience of shamanic type is not collective but individual; so
it appeared attractive to the increasing individualism of an epoch, for which the collective
ecstasies of Dionysus were no longer entirely sufficient. And it is reasonable to suppose,
moreover, that these characteristics had some influence, on the new and revolutionary ideas
of connections between soul/mind and body, which appeared at the end of the archaic time.
By speaking to the individual as such, and no longer as a simple element of a group, by
allocating to him some psychic powers, this new religious experience made human being a
recipient of one fragment of divinity. Because what something new this movement with
religious and social consequences, both being on a par , brings, it is that it ascribes to the
human being a “hidden self“ of divine origin, which was completely new. Thereby, it provided
to Man a new interpretation of his life. The soul/mind has an existence independent of the
body in which it lives, it can travel at leisure towards other countries, towards the world of the
soul/minds, have a supra-normal life. We find well there, what characterizes the person of the
shaman.One can mention among those whom Erwin Rohde calls ecstatic clairvoyants and
purifying priests, a person by the name Abaris/Abarix.Abaris/Abarix was a druid Hyperborean
or more exactly coming from an ancient civilization of the Danube banks. The Greek legends
often ascribe to him a golden arrow given by Abellio (Apollo in the graeca interpretatio,
which, moreover, locates rather Abarix’s native country north of the Black Sea; Abarix would
have been one of its priests), and thanks to it he could travel in space and become invisible.
Some people claim that Abarix could live months without eating or drinking, that he was able
to predict, to make the storms calmed down , and to drive out diseases.Herodotus speaks
about the arrow he carried with him and of his complete abstention of any food.
Let this suffice which has been said of the Hyperboreans; for the tale of Abaris, who is
reported to have been a Hyperborean, I do not tell, namely how he carried the arrow about all
over the earth, eating no food. If, however, there are any Hyperboreans, it follows that there
are also Hypernotians. And I laugh when I see that, though many before this have drawn
maps of the Earth, yet no one has set the matter forth in an intelligent way; seeing that they
draw Ocean flowing round the Earth, which is circular…” (Herodotus, book IV, chapter XXXVI)
This arrow, attribute of Abaris/Abarix, raises a real problem; it seems indeed that we are there
in the presence of two different traditions. Here, in a rationalist version, the Father of History
mentions it as an object. Elsewhere, it is learned that this arrow is golden and comes from
Apollo. What will make Erwin Rohde (quotation from memory) say: “Bearing in his hands the
golden arrow, sign of his nature and of his mission, he traveled all over the world, moving
aside the diseases by means of sacrifices, predicting earthquakes and other calamities.”
Arrow belongs to the traditional kitting out of Siberian shamans. Thus among the Buryats, the
shaman sits down on a piece of fabric close to the patient who needs his services.
Surrounded by objects of which an arrow, from the head of which a red silk yarn leads to the
birch located outside the yurt. It is thanks to it that the soul/mind of the patient is supposed to
return to its body. But another tradition, which was going to be revived by Heraclides Ponticus
and some later authors, states clearly that it is sat astride on this arrow that Abarix arrived
from north, this arrow then playing the part of the witch’s broom of the Middle Ages legends.
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This possibility of traveling through the airs is not specific to Abarix.Abarix was also
mentioned by Pindar and some others. He would have, with the bones of Pelops, made a
statue of Minerva in order to be used as a talisman by Trojans. The famous palladium which
protected or made impregnable the city which housed it. Suidas also ascribes to this Abarix
several works now disappeared: the Scythian Oracles, the visit of Apollo among
Hyperboreans, some expiatory formulas, and a prose theogony.Pythagoras would have
stolen from him the aforementioned arrow and achieved with it many marvelous exploits.
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END OF THE WORLD
OF HUNTER-GATHERERS.
SPREADING OF IDEAS OR COLONIZATION?
Mesolithic era (from the Greek word mesos which means middle) is the period of Prehistory
which succeeds Epipaleolithic there are 9.000 years to 10.000 years.This transitional period is
marked by many economic and social changes in particular linked to the development of
forest in Europe. It ends between the eighth and the fourth thousand years before our era,
with the beginning of Neolithic.This Mesolithic era is characterized by a certain number of
behavioral changes in the human groups, linked to the post-glacial climate warming and to
the changes as for the environment which results from that (forest reconquest, disappearance
of the large migrating herbivores like reindeer…). Human groups keep a wandering way of
life, but abundance and diversity of resources, compared to the Ice Age, support nomadism…
on more limited territories.
Before Neolithic revolution happens, our ancestors lived in rock shelters and got their
livelihood from hunting, fishing or gathering… Thus lived for example the men who decorated
the caves at Lascaux and Altamira (16 000 years before our era).Nomads and very few (a few
hundreds of thousands all in all), they traveled over the country in search of food. They
enjoyed without too much difficulty the fruits of the land, all the more so that after the last
glaciation, the warming of the climate in the temperate zones had supported the proliferation
of the game. These first men used stones and bones to defend themselves, cut out meat and
dig out roots. To make these basic tools more cutting and more pointed; they cut them with
flint (an extremely hard stone).The spread of specific cultural characteristics, over important
territories, shows the possibility of a connection between distinct groups. The close groups
met to exchange techniques and food products or to support exogamy.The use of bow and
arrow, particularly, spreads. The use of microliths for hunting weapons is become more
marked compared to previous periods: some pointed small elements made of flint, often
geometrical, are made then are fixed on wooden or bone shaft, in order to be used as
missiles. The hunting of small mammals and the mollusk consumption (snails, etc.) becomes
widespread.The Main Mesolithic groups, undoubtedly matching more technical entities than
civilizations, are the Maglemosian and the Erteboelle culture in Denmark; the Sauveterrian,
the Tardenoisian or Castelnovian in France,Within this framework, some communities benefit
from abundant food within reach to live with several families in a permanent village, rather
than to move unceasingly and to sleep in makeshift shelters. They choose to live grouped, but
without changing something to their practice of hunter-gatherers. By their settled way of life,
these increased groups put down roots in a stable environment, in which the society of dead,
of which the burials are witnesses, strengthens symbolically that of the living, and can
legitimate in a way its fixed establishment.
!--------------- ---------------------------- ------------------------------------!
There exists a druidic myth interesting to meditate, the one which deals with the origin of the
medicinal herbs. It was recorded in the book of Conquests in Ireland, at the time of the
second battle of the Plain of standing stones or mounds.
Miach was buried by Diancecht, and 365 plants grew on his grave, as much as the number
of his joints and of his nerves. Airmed opened her coat and arranged these plants according
to their qualities. But Diancecht arrived and mixed up the plants, so that one does no longer
know their effects unless the Holy Spirit revealed it thereafter “.
For the baron of Longueil (the Canadian Grant Allen), the idea of reincarnation is indissolubly
linked to agriculture and therefore to Neolithic revolution. For this author, agriculture was
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possible only from the moment when there had been clearing of the forest and the only
occasion of this clearing for the “primitive ones” was the burial of the dead. Moreover, since
the Paleolithic, the burials were accompanied by deposits of tools, of animals, of edible
plants. Under the effect of the putrefaction of the corpse and of the offerings, of the frequent
libations above the graves, the agricultural plants emerged.When that was done for the first
time, people concluded from it that the dead, from the bottom of his tomb, had caused the
growth of these plants.
This agricultural production thus became a gift of the deceased, and even, in a way, the new
embodiment of the deceased himself. The rebirth of the dead had been done through the
plants, and in them the soul/mind of the deceased laid.When the effects of this first harvest
began to decrease, the need to sacrifice a victim to get a comparable result made its
appearance, because with its burial accompanied by edible plants, the creating act was
repeated. Each new victim was to have the same qualities as well as the same powers as the
previous ones; it was to be equated with the human being who, the first, from the bottom of
his grave, brought the growth of the beneficial plants.The assumption of the baron of Longueil
(Grant Allen) is plausible, but was not confirmed; it is perhaps too good to be true. In any
case, it gives an account of the inextricable link which exists between the agriculture and the
worship of ancestors.In the present state of our knowledge, all that we may say positively it is
that with agriculture, the Man of the Neolithic era had conceptualized the fact that seeds in
soil lost their shapes forever, while putrefying. The birth of the new plant went through a
hiatus, a dissolution of the shapes accompanied by a reduction to water: the new life went
through a necessary death of the seed.The Man of the Neolithic era equated the drama of the
vegetable seed with his own death, and in that he broke with the Paleolithic Man on several
points. First because there was no longer a place for the parthenogenesis, and because the
hunter-gatherer of Paleolithic, by killing animals, ascribed the responsibility of this act to the
deity. The farmer of the Neolithic era, understanding better than Paleolithic people what life is,
faced up his responsibilities as a living being in the world, and therefore accepted them.
When man had been aware of his way of being in the world, and of the responsibilities linked
to this state of being in the world, a decision was made.The idea of these people is that food
or medicinal plant is the result of a primordial murder. A divine being was killed,
dismembered, parceled out, then the pieces of his body gave birth to unknown plants hitherto,
which since, form the main food or medicine of human beings. Hence human sacrifice,
cannibalism, and other rites, sometimes cruel. Man did not only learn that his status wants he
must kill to live, he also accepted responsibility for the vegetation, for its durability, he had
thus for that accepted human sacrifice, and cannibalism… at least such is the opinion of
Mircea Eliade.
The World Vision of the men of the Neolithic era was therefore deeply modified. On the
human level, sperm and blood became the essence of life, and expressed it sacredness. And
with this discovery of the importance of sperm, fecundation was from now on in a clear way
viewed as a consequence of mating. This inference, and others, showed that nothing, or
almost nothing, was given in nature as a finished product.For hunting, animal was given in
nature, it “was enough” to go and seek it. For gathering, vegetable food was also given in
nature and better than hunting, it was literally enough to go and seek it. With agriculture, it
was no longer the case, it needed some acts, some work. To get something, from now on
active participation of individuals was necessary. Farmer was forced to work out his projects
at least several months before their implementation, to carry out in a precise order a complex
series of activities for a remote result, and especially at the beginning, never certain: harvest.
While worrying about the success of his harvest, Neolithic farmer explored time; he
experienced cosmic, circular and cyclic time. All these elements, which made an irruption in
the awareness of farmers, were not vain. By working out the structure of his rites, the farmer
recorded in it, his sorrows, his anxieties, his uncertainties, and his hopes.It is thanks to that
we also know the agrarian revolution had an impact on the spiritual life of Neolithic people.
The empirical knowledge of the seed which loses its forms in the soil was very revealing. After
the dissolution of the shapes and the reduction to water, it was clear that within this chaotic
state, something was organized, a force which, using the agricultural work, made new plants
germinate. What agriculture revealed that in what it performed a revolution was the
awareness, the bringing out and the glorification, of this force, of this power which makes
grow, which generates life. Through the multiple harvest rites , it was not the plant itself,
which was venerated, but this force, of which the plant was only a marvelous expression. One
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can say that what the Neolithic Man saw, what he understood and learned from the drama of
seeds, the lesson that he learned from it; it is the existence of this force, of this power, which
animated plants; and by extrapolation vegetation and cosmos.One thought for a long time,
and one thinks still sometimes, that the Man of archaic societies was a happy idiot.In the
history of Mankind, this moment of a very particular importance experimented on the contrary
an explosion of its creativity. We are still unaware of what was precisely the driving force of
Neolithic revolution, but there is a paradox to want at all costs to see in the current ritual
practices resulting from these Neolithic people, some misleading of the human mind; whereas
these are the same Neolithic who provided the basis of contemporary civilization.
The worship of ancestors was born following the invention of agriculture; it is a consequence
of it. It is therefore linked to the agrarian phenomenon. And the invention of agriculture took
place at a time of a big explosion of human creativity, which was previous to the invention of
the agrarian phenomenon, besides. It is consequently necessary to try to understand what
happened.
It is with the Mesolithic era that agriculture appeared, which started such a deep revolution. In
the beginning, before even the Mesolithic era, it was primarily a question of cultivation of
tubers, then with the Neolithic era, of cultivation of cereals. How the discovery of agriculture
was made? Is it only the result of a long life lived concretely according to the rhythm of the
vegetable life, or is a conclusion drawn from another thing? What occurred to the men of the
Neolithic era so that agrarian revolution has such an amount of repercussion in their life?
Neolithic era is the second great period of Prehistory, “the polished stone age,” and ranges
from 10.000 to 2.300, according to places.
Circa 10.000, whereas the return of a milder climate spread, under the influence of people
from Anatolia, the blossoming of a new type of civilization (agriculture, breeding, and
ceramics) happened.The Neolithic era marks a decisive turn. It was associated with the
settling process of peoples. The use of pottery (that the giving up of nomadism enabled), and
that of polished stone tools, are its characteristic features.If in Paleolithic the cultural facies
were defined by the way of cutting stone, it will be now the shape and the decoration of
pottery that will be used as reference.But more than the settling process or the invention of
pottery, it is especially the livelihood change of human society during post-glacial times, that
is used today to define the phenomenon known as “neolithization.”The progressive passage
from a food strategy based only on the gathering of food products in natural environment, to a
more diversified economy where farming and taming of animals made it possible for men to
be less dependent on the environment in which they moved; was carried out on various points
of the sphere. The farming and the breeding which characterize the Neolithic way of life
indeed appeared independently in several places in the world and at different times (Central
America, African Sahel, South-east Asia, Nile Valley and Middle East). Always in areas which
combined a warm and sunny climate (but with abundant water) and the presence of plants as
well of animals easy to domesticate.The first center of Neolithic was the Middle East. i.e.,
mainly the zone of the “fertile Crescent” (area which stretches from South-east Turkey to the
north of Iraq and along the Mediterranean Sea. In other words, towards Syria, Lebanon, Israel
and Jordan). The more you move away from this area, the more the appearance of the
Neolithic era is recent.The spreading towards the west was completed by contiguity or
migrations.Migration of arts, metallurgy, plants and vegetables (wild corn, barley, millet)
followed these human migrations.Man then becomes mainly producer, farmer, and learns
how to select most productive or easy to cultivate plants, similarly for animals. The
improvement of the living conditions involves a demographic expansion.In the Middle East,
this way of life settles very gradually from eighth thousand years before our era, because of
the particularly favorable conditions in the “fertile Crescent.”1 A climate which is become
warm very quickly after the glacial period.2 The alluvial plains of the large rivers of
Mesopotamia.3 The presence of wild plants, cereals (barley and corn) or leguminous plants
(pea, lentils) already consumable before the appearance of their domestic versions, and very
easy to harvest.4 The presence of steppe ungulates (wild oxen, sheep and goats) specific to
this area in addition to the wild ox (aurochs) and to the wild boar with a much broader range
zone, and of which herds traversed this territory. These edible plants and these animals will
be natural reserves of the domesticated species.5 The geographical position of the Middle
East, which is at the junction of continents, will make the spreading of the new discoveries
easier, sometimes independently of population movements.
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In the Middle East the power will be defined consequently by the accumulation and the total
control of wealth, whereas in Europe the first place remains granted to individuals able to
make contact with the invisible world and to control its forces (shamans).
Middle East was the cradle of a way of life which was established everywhere in the
world.Between - 7.500 and - 6.200, it is the explosion, the “great exodus!” Migrants spread
the urban and agro-pastoral economy of the Neolithic era beyond the Fertile Crescent,
towards Europe like towards the Zagros Mountains (Iran).
Protohistoric Europe resists any attempt at characterization it in strictly economic terms, what
leads some researchers besides to wonder about the persistent inability of the first European
societies to set up complex institutions and great States, at least before Romanization. At the
dawn of History, concerned societies do not give each other apparently unified command nor
general control of the available territory. The powers of the god-or-demons and those of the
“chiefs” are hardly coextensive there: in many cases, shaman limits the powers of the king. In
the society, the alliance systems are extremely changing. In addition, the shape of beings is
regarded as unstable (many stories of metamorphoses) and the time is handleable, while the
abodes of the gods and of the men are not clearly separate. In this unstable social and
ideological universe, man is wary of the visible and of the figurative arts, as well as he is a
little interested in a precise integration in the time and disdain for the writing is shown.From
6.000 to 2000, Neolithic era settles in Europe. It is spoken of “Neolithic revolution,” but, in
fact, it is more a gradual evolution than a sudden change; three thousand years was
necessary so that it extends to the whole of the European territory. The idea of a massive and
fast invasion colonization is obsolete today; the acquisition of the characteristics of the
Neolithic era was not done just like that, and the exchanges between first farmers and last
hunter-gatherers had to be numerous. Thus, in the South of France, the sheep will be present
before pottery and husbandry. Elsewhere, ceramics were sometimes previous to the new
economic activities. Colonization was therefore probably less important than the spreading of
ideas in groups practicing up to that point, in an intensive way, hunting and harvest of
leguminous plants.However, the word “revolution“ is right, since it is a major and irreversible
historical change. Neolithization of Europe was little by little followed by considerable
socioeconomic changes. The emergence at the Neolithic era of the settling process and of
the husbandry will have everywhere incalculable consequences on social organization.Since
there were farming and also breeding,populations gathered to form village communities
(settling process).It was necessary also that each one is secured against the risk to be
stripped of his cultivation and of his supplies. Thus were born the idea of property as well as
the laws which are related to it!In the Middle East, the settling process and the foundation of
the first villages are previous to the breeding and farming; in Europe, these two phenomena
are often simultaneous.In a way parallel to this new socioeconomic organization, Neolithic era
will be characterized by a certain number of major technical innovations: ceramics, polishing
of stone as well as weaving.In Western Europe the Neolithic era develops between 6.000
and 2.000 and can be divided in three periods of which dating is approximate.Early Neolithic
era 6.000 to 4.500.Middle Neolithic era 4.500 to 3.500.Later Neolithic era - 3.500 to -
2.000.
What is undeniable therefore it is there was neolithization, of the prehistoric hunter-gatherers.
Various theses clash on this subject. At least 6.
1. The farmers of the Neolithic era ousted then eliminated (more or less quickly) hunter-
gatherers (genocide by people replacement).
2. The Neolithic settlers reduce, through their population pressure, the territories of the last
hunter-gatherers.
3. The hunter-gatherers had begun themselves a slow evolution towards farming and
breeding that they did nothing but accelerate under the influence of newcomers.
4. The passage between these two lifestyles, “hunter-gatherers” and “farmers,” was perhaps
done through assimilation, the first ones accepting the advantages of the way of life of the
seconds, even if conflicts between groups could emerge. The hunter-gatherers had in no way
demographically declined, but had learned and passed in turn to these new techniques.
According to the detailed study of DNA extracted from the skeletons of the first European
farmers; the men who introduced husbandry in Central Europe, approximately 7.500 years
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ago, indeed do not seem to have contributed much to the genetic formation of modern
Europeans. This work reinforces on the contrary the idea that the people whose ancestors
lived in Central Europe are the Paleolithic descendants of hunter-gatherers come in Europe,
approximately 40.000 years ago; rather than those of the first farmers suddenly arrived a few
tens of thousands of years after, during Neolithic age. Researchers coming from Germany,
the United Kingdom and Estonia, had extracted then analyzed mitochondrial DNA from 24
skeletons of farmers, coming from 16 different places located in Germany, Austria and
Hungary. Six of these 24 farmers belonged to the human lineage “N1a,” which is extremely
rare. The fact that 6 of the 24 farmers only belonged to this rare lineage, suggests that the
first farmers did not leave important genetic traces in the modern European peoples. Most
probable is that they are small groups of pioneers who have conveyed agriculture to new
areas in Europe. But once agriculture was adopted, the neighboring hunter-gatherers could
adapt to this new civilization, and their number then exceeded that of the first farmers. There
would have been therefore progressive acculturation of groups losing their identity slowly.6.
The Neolithic farmers are in fact the Aryan ones (Colin Renfrew).7. They are hunter-gatherers
who are the source of Aryans.
It is not up to the “high knowers” today that we are to decide between these various theses.
The only thing important being not to seek for our spirituality another origin than that which is
really its (it is neither alien, neither Atlantean, nor shouted from the rooftops or revealed by
God or the Devil personally, by his angels or his prophets…).
Below an excellent article by Venceslas Kruta devoted to the subject.
Some of these groups showed an extraordinary precocity, bringing forward many inventions
generally associated with the rise of agriculture. Various clans of hunters of mammoths in
Central Europe, which met regularly probably stimulated by an effect of emulation and a
need for cooperating - in places chosen for their strategic situation; modeled circa - 27.000
the first clay objects (some statuettes of naked women, the “Venus,” or of animals), cooked in
kinds of ovens built for this purpose. Probably destined to take part in magic operations, this
terra cotta delivered fabric prints and even a fingerprint. If the presence of objects out of
polished stone is added , we see these hunters knew already at least three of the main
techniques generally regarded as inseparable from agriculture appearance.Around the end of
the ninth thousand years before our era, two facts, closely linked, come to radically change
the European landscape and the living conditions of its inhabitants. The end of the last glacial
period - with a lasting warming which changed the climate completely - and the invention of
husbandry in the Middle East. The climate change clears large surfaces in the enormous
glaciers which covered the Center and the North of Europe, and of which the moving forward
as well as the withdrawals had modeled the landscape. Gradually changing - but radically -
the plant cover, it involves the displacement of the game, mainly the reindeer, which formed
the main resource of the hunter-gatherer groups of the end of glacial time. The tundra is
replaced gradually by a forest landscape, the Epipaleolithic groups follow the migration of
reindeers towards the north or adapt to the new conditions; they then diversify their livelihood
while withdrawing on the most favorable sites for this type of hunting and gathering: river
estuaries, lake shores, marshes, sea coasts …The cultivation of cereals and the breeding of
Bovidae, sheep, goats and swine, are introduced in Europe from the Middle East by two main
roads: the sea route Mediterranean and the land route, the Danube.
The first does not involve apparently large human displacements; it is especially a spreading
of agricultural techniques within Mesolithic peoples - living hitherto especially on fishing - by
small groups of sailors going along the coasts. It is from the coastal regions that husbandry is
spread towards the interior, making an important increase in population, possible. In the sixth
thousand years before our era, the knowledge of agriculture reaches the shores of the
Atlantic where communities develop; their number, their level of organization, and their way of
life - from now on that one of the settlers - are clearly shown by spectacular megalithic
monuments.
The second wave - that of the Danube - matches the progression of generations of settlers’
descendants came from Asia Minor, probably about the middle of the seventh thousand years
before our era. Settled first in the Balkans, they slowly go up the course of the Danube by
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occupying the most fertile soils - mainly the plateaus covered with loess - until they arrive in
the Paris Basin around the end of the sixth thousand years. They met perhaps on their way
some groups of hunter-gatherers - that they integrated - without their remarkable
homogeneity nor their obvious cultural filiation with the initial Balkan center was changed by
that.Several thousands of years will be necessary before British Isles and Scandinavia are
affected by the phenomenon. That represents a slow migration of ideas and men,
approximately 25 km by generation.The first European Neolithic era matches a society still
very egalitarian, and little differentiated, as well as an itinerant agriculture.All in all, these first
farmers seem to have paid only little interest in hunting, especially those who belong to the
“linear” pottery tradition. In the sites of the Paris Basin where domestic waste could be
studied, the game often represents less than 20% of the remains of animals.On the periphery
of the “neolithized” area, the Mesolithic hunters come into contact with the newcomers; some
ones adopt ceramics, others get domestic animals (but it is not known if it is by barter or as a
rustling result). Conversely, the Neolithic people get ornaments in shells collected outside
their cultural area.Nothing makes it possible to prove or disprove the assumption of certain
scientists making these settlers the first true wave of populations of Indo-European stock. In
any case, however, this flow can be regarded as the source of the spreading of Indo-
European languages as well as civilization in vast regions of Western and Northern Europe;
the phenomenon being latter to it for at least two thousand years.To highlight the double
origin of this first geographically stable peopling of Europe, it is necessary to have recourse,
in the absence of written accounts, to a certain number of archeological remains. The long
Danubian houses with frames of driven in the ground posts, that we find to the south of Paris;
and more still terra cotta - reinvented in the Middle East - which appears the faithful reflection,
as well of the daily life as of the collective beliefs. The pottery shapes no longer correspond to
only utilitarian demand; they also express from now on aesthetic choices. The strong sobriety
of decoration most often made by print of cardium shells, characteristic of the maritime
current - is counterbalanced by sequences of angular or curvilinear, painted or engraved,
patterns, of a very complex layout sometimes; spiral, symbolic graph of the Sun course
between two solstices, occupying a favored place among them. Some Danubian settlers then
model also statuettes of women with well-marked sexual attributes - representations of a
Great Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer this word, the nutritive Earth intended to
strengthen the fruitfulness of fields and animals (Karanovo, Bulgaria).Thus, for the first time,
these objects in terra cotta confirm the existence and specify the outlines of the two great
complexes, sources of the geographically stable peopling of Europe. The civilizations of the
first Mediterranean and Atlantic farmers on the one hand - resulting from the acculturation of
the Mesolithic peoples in these areas - the various facies of the civilization of the Danubian
settlers coming from Asia Minor, on the other hand. The first match the strong pre-Indo-
European substrate, of which we can detect traces in the European West, and of which the
last vestige could be the Basque language in Spain and in France. The linguistic membership,
even approximate, of the second one, cannot be reasonably specified. As much by its number
that by its dynamism, it, however, formed a relatively important human contribution in the
formation of the peoples of ancient Europe.
!-------- -------------------------- ----------------------------------!
The development which followed the introduction of agriculture was therefore fast and
spectacular. As well in Central as in Western Europe, we see appearing, as soon as the fifth
thousand years, community great ceremonial centers. Their aspect makes the link clearly with
the astronomical knowledge essential to follow the course of the solar year, and to organize
the agricultural activities. In the south-east of Europe, where the first farmers settled, some
built-up areas appear. The simple villages, made up of some scattered houses built a little
randomly, are replaced by groups of buildings, gathered in small blocks distributed according
to a regular plan, most of the time rigorously orthogonal. It is, of course, not exaggerated to
regard them as embryos of urban sites. The communities which reside in these places seem
to have sometimes reached the threshold of the use of writing; their hierarchical social
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structure appears clearly in the necropolises where, as soon as the fifth thousand years, first
objects out of metal appear. It is not only gold gotten by gold washing - but also copper,
extract from local mines. The landscape is modified, this time through the action of Mankind;
vast expanses are deforested, for the needs of an extensive agriculture, which meets the fast
exhaustion of soils by setting in cultivation of new surfaces. Large areas of pastures support
breeding, which, however, contributes as soon as this time, when they are sheep or goats, to
weaken the soils exposed to washing and erosion. The climatic variations, and particularly the
getting colder which takes place in the fifth thousand years, probably amplify the
consequences of human activity.The great leap forward caused by the development of
agriculture experiences sometimes some rather sudden slowing down or even some stops,
particularly in the most sensitive zones; to the environmental problems - already! - the
tensions generated by internal or external socioeconomic imbalances in the communities are
added. The conflict situations increase, and the stability of the Neolithic societies is more and
more often challenged. The archeological vestiges do not make it possible nevertheless to
comprehend the detail of the events, nor even often the precise sequential chain of the
changes in space and time (Venceslav Kruta).The passage from a civilization of hunter-
gatherers to that of breeders plowers caused the passage from a matriarchal society to a
patriarchal society. In the first, in the image of the insect society, the man is the warrior and
his life is precarious, it is a kind of tool, of subjected soldier, of slave hardly good to bring back
food. The society is built around the women and their fruitfulness. These female societies are
ultra-violent in the image of their most successfully completed mythical shape, the
Amazons.But with the cultivation, and the breeding (husbandry), the man becomes
predominant because of his bodily force, and consequently his life expectancy similar to that
of women. The property rights like their hereditary handover oblige to know the father of the
child (what no importance has in matriarchal societies), and therefore compels the virginity
before marriage, even the fidelity of the spouse. Our “modern” marriage contract is perhaps
born from these constraints: obligation for the wife to guarantee the father (virginity but also
fidelity), on the other hand, obligation for the man to materially support her (ease and non-
abandonment) in the long run.During this period, the cultivated surface increased. The first
large clearings are done using adzes, picks and axes, or swidden technique. The fallen down
trees are burned on the spot, perhaps after having retrieved the logs (the building timber:
trade practiced by my father with a wooden steering wheel GMC in the fifties) and the slash-
and-burn cultivation is then practiced. The use of swing plows is probable, at least in certain
areas and for some important work. Regeneration of soils implies prolonged fallow, followed
again by assarting and swidden. The mediocre possibilities of forage storage force to keep
only a few breeding animals during the winter (what could contribute to accelerating the
“genetic drift” compared to the wild stocks).The men of the Neolithic era build houses which
“last,” sometimes gathered in fortified villages, of which territory is chosen according to the
resources which will make it possible for individuals to live on it all the year. Wood, clay, and
stone, when wood is lacking, are the materials most usually used. Moreover, cob is an
excellent insulating against cold, humidity or heat.The civilization of the two migratory currents
is differentiated by economic characteristics, by the shape of houses, by funerary rites, by the
way of life adapted to each environment, but also by specific cultural models, one
Mediterranean, the other Danubian.In South-east, a Mediterranean style inherited from the
Middle East is established; with the preferential breeding of goats and sheep, small houses of
wood and raw bricks or of cob, burials within the housing, painted ceramics, pottery with print
decoration; which will be spread from the Western Greece to Portugal.In temperate Europe,
on the other hand, along the Danube and its tributaries, where a vast and dense forest
stretches that man assarts (clears) with an axe or a fire, man rather rears cattle, better
adapted to the climate. He builds out with wood and clay some large lengthened houses from
10 to 50 meters length, with thatched roofs, model identical in all Central Europe to the Paris
Basin; and the dead are buried in specific spaces, the first necropolises.The frontier between
these two cultural blocks is not always very clear, and certain areas, as the Paris Basin,
undergoes a double influence.The time of spreading being passed, each area works out
quickly, its own traditions, gets an identity as well as a history. Europe therefore becomes
multicultural, and other divisions appear. Around 4500, for example, the appearance of
different social levels is noticed. Certain graves contain obvious signs of prestige: precious
objects, ornaments.There still, that appears in different ways.In the West, they are large
mounds in which we found long ceremonial axes more than 30 centimeters long, polished in a
stone imported from the Alps, the jadeite. Later in the same zone megaliths will come, which
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are funerary rooms.In Eastern Europe, in burials, the marks of prestige are rather some
metallic objects (copper axes and weapons), gold scepters and ornaments.With agriculture
and breeding, the relation with nature is reversed gradually, and the idea of the domination of
man over nature therefore will be developing to lead, technologically speaking, to industry.
But, at the same time, the inversion of this relation will be accompanied by a collapse of social
equality. After having controlled nature, the first farmers changed the direction of the relations
inside their own species. Among settlers, society often tends to become vertical; a social
pyramid is set up.The agricultural productive inequalities, according to the quality of cultivated
lands, gradually will transform the relations of mutual aid between hunter-gatherers, of initial
communism, into relations of dependence in the first societies, divided into social classes.
The limitation of the surface of the cultivable lands and the social inequalities also will lead to
the first social confrontations between human groups (class struggle) and to war.But this
protection of possessions had in no way to go up to the sacralization of private property in the
Roman way (right to use AND MISUSE); since the property of the means of production
(lands, forests…) belonged still theoretically to the deities or to the community. Not to private
individuals, who had only the temporary use or possession of it.
At the beginning of the Neolithic era, the containers are out of wood, dried squash (calabash)
or out of clay dried with the sun. Let us note how pottery appears in Japan as soon as the
12th thousand years before our era, and in the Sahara in the 9th thousand years, that is to
say, quite before the invention of agriculture! The Neolithic revolution did nothing but spread
use of it. It is therefore present at all the stages of this period, and its form, its decorations, its
baking mode, are used to mark the times or to date occupation levels. Some kinds of bottles
with a neck or a globular belly, of dishes, of plates, of careened bowls, of cups in the shape of
“perfume burner“ of “base goblet,” even of “support vase , also appear then in pottery.To face
the needs for storage or cooking cereals and other foods, pottery will prove to be completely
adapted.The impact of this new technology on the populations was very strong, because
beyond its utility aspect, ceramics were also a factor of cultural identity, even of social
cohesion.In order to decorate, or to enable the best handling, decoration in relief was printed
using various objects (plaited rope, edge of shells, wheat ears, and scratches of nails).
Thereafter the decorations printed on the belly of pottery will make it possible to differentiate
the peoples from each other. Thus the corded ware ceramic which is previous to the Bronze
Age in Europe; it is decorated by incision using a thin cord.The linear ceramics, which is the
oldest Neolithic ceramics in Central and Eastern Europe (sixth thousand years before our
era), shows chevrons, ribbons in arcs of a circle, spirals accompanied by incisions and prints.
A particular shape called “musical note pottery,“consists in reinforcing the incisions along
prints, the so created parallel lines evoking a musical staff.In Europe, as we have already said
it, the shell called cardium gave its name to the civilization with printed pottery, also called
consequently cardium pottery (sixth-fifth thousand years before our era). The decoration
forms zigzag lines laid out in panels or in horizontal lines. The bottom is round and the pottery
is easily prehensile, thanks to buttons and handles.Neolithic ceramics were especially
intended for domestic use of storage. The shape of an object did not result from a gratuitous
act, but from a conscious choice associated with a precise function (bowls, container, jars,
and large dishes).The baking mode was largely controlled, reaching temperatures bordering
700 degrees to 800 degrees, and the decorations as well as the shapes were hand-
fashioned, not made with a potter's wheel, which will appear for thin ceramics only
later.Ceramics do not have only utility function. They have recourse to them to contain
funerary offerings, or as a funeral urn (urn-field civilization). Certain shapes, certain
decorations, specialists say “styles” of ceramics, beyond merely artistic considerations,
undoubtedly had a symbolic role, obvious for members of the community. Moreover, many
figurines of “goddess-or-demoness“ or fairies, if this term is preferred, made of terra cotta,
punctuate the Neolithic era in almost all areas.
Funerary practices.Among the last hunters, in the Mesolithic era, living and dead mix almost
in everyday life, and past or present combine themselves in housing. An enormous
importance given to the dead is nevertheless noticed. The burials are found in quantity. It is
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not only the grave which is in honor place ; it is also a whole approach to the treatment of
corpses, with cutting-up or removing of bones.In the Neolithic era, the funerary practices
diverge according to the membership of the late to one or the other of the two large civilization
currents, the Cardium pottery culture or the Linear pottery culture.In the first dead are buried
in graves under the housing, which will become cist graves, before evolving to Megalithism,
with, of course, variants as well in space as in time.In the second vast funerary fields far away
from the houses were formed. Largest of these necropolises contained more than 200 graves.
Each burial was made of a grave surrounded by four wooden posts and contained a body
bent on the left side, the head generally turned towards the east and covered with red ocher.
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DAILY LIFE DURING THE NEOLITHIC ERA IN THE ALPS.
The man of the Neolithic era is neither a savage nor a barbarian, it is a man, or a woman, like
you and your servant, with the same potential, that he has begun to exploit. He has an
already worked out language with which he can tackle the great questions which still haunt us
(boys, girls, love, death, what there is after death, injustice, war, chiefs…); during the evening
gathering by the fire.He has an adapted technology (he can make a fire with flints and tinder,
and can build vast houses. As we saw, wood and clay are the most used materials in the
building: in the area, they are very common. Moreover, cob is an excellent insulating material
against cold, heat and humidity. When wood is absent from the area, men use stone). He has
elders excellent observers of nature and, moreover, having memory. He has a religious life
and spirituality (shamanism). In short, he has a civilization.Introduced since the fourth
thousand years into the Alps, husbandry is therefore the activity which characterizes by
definition the Neolithic revolution in this area of the World. After deforestation as the study of
fossil pollen shows it, man practiced the cultivation of cereals (corn, barley), the breeding
(goats, pigs, oxen and sheep). But the food still remained very dependent on fishing, hunting
and gathering.Men of this time probably resembled much to Europeans today, but they were
less tall due to the fact that they ate less meat. They also ate much less better during the long
and cold winter months, and probably sometimes it happened for them more once to go and
sleep hungry.The site of Cuiry-les-Chaudardes (French department of Aisne) was used as a
model for the reconstruction of a typical Neolithic house. Dated back to 4.600 before our era
(Middle Neolithic), it has a trapezoidal shape and is 39 m 40 long, and 7 m 25 to 8 m 50
wide.Having an entrance east-facing, thus offering its smaller side to the dominant winds, this
building consists of five longitudinal rows of wooden posts (including three rows of interior
posts), which support horizontal beams; on which are lying rafters bound to each other by a
whole system of battens (flexible rods in willow or hazel trees) interlaced, on which some
thatch bundles (Reed straw) “are bent” using thin ropes in flax. At the top of the roof, thatch is
folded up on each side and is covered with a cob. The non-load-bearing walls are punctuated
with less important posts, bound by wattles made of flexible rods of osier covered on their two
faces with a cob, mixture of clay, straw and water. These walls are protected from the bad
weather by a roof which goes down very low.Its imposing dimensions enable it to house a
family in the broadest sense of the term, i.e., the parents, the children, but also brothers and
sisters, cousins, uncles and aunts…In the fourth thousand years, some villages entrench
themselves on rocky spurs, protected by a ditch or a rampart: the future Celtic hill forts. In
plain or on heights, we find rather enigmatic constructions: they are fences, with several
entrances, made up of a ditch coupled with a palisade. They could be used as housing, as
commercial or as pilgrimage places … even as shrines.
The Neolithic era is characterized, among other innovations, by the invention of woven
clothing, therefore by a textile craft. If the deposits of this time deliver in abundance the
spindle whorls, accessories made of earth or of stone linked to the spinning; the site of
Charavines- Les-Baigneurs on the Paladru Lake (French department of Isere ) shows some
elements that water preserved, as spindles, weaving combs, balls of thread and some fabric
fragments.The stone tools are represented by polished axes and a large variety of flint, whose
shapes are adapted to their use: for example some scrapers.Flint daggers were found still
fitted with their wooden handle.The Mediterranean shepherd, the Danubian farmers, do not
use much flint, because the river pebbles are in sufficient number to work axes or adzes.On
the other hand, the Campignian foresters too consume much flint for their cutters, axes, hoes,
which are always made with this material. The hard work of wood requires large tools. So the
gathering of flint nodules on the surface of the ground is not enough. The man thus started to
dig pits to reach the depths of flint seams, regularly lined up in the chalky layers. At Spiennes,
in Hainaut, Belgium, one digs first horizontal adits, from the slopes of the valley where the flint
layers come through the soil. But when they are too deep, these adits become dangerous; the
miners have then the idea to dig pits, starting from the plateau, to reach the flint beds.The first
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underground flint mines were dug in chalk thanks to picks out of stag antlers or flint. The pit
could be 20 m deep. The miners slipped into radiating out galleries to tear off large nodules of
flint. This semi-industrial exploitation generated export circuits sometimes very vast.
The terra cotta containers have varied forms adapted to their functions: large vases for
storage and cooking, smaller crockery for drinking and eating.
This society of settlers practiced trading exchanges: the composition of ornaments (copper
from Languedoc, calcite from the pre-Alps and especially amber from the Baltic) witnesses
the circulation of the goods.
Approximately 2.700 years before our era, a remarkable human community settled on the
shore of the Lake Paladru (French department of Isere). Using the fall of the water level, it
built there a village made up of large rectangular houses and surrounded by a palisade.Large
pine stakes, regularly spaced, and deeply knocked into chalk, formed the framework of the
houses. Between these stakes some vertical rods, in the hazel tree most of the time,
maintained vegetable elements (branches, reeds, mosses) which formed the walls. The cover
of the roof too was entirely made of vegetables.Clay coats were laid on the ground to receive
domestic hearths.
Specialists estimate the population of this housing made up of five or six large houses, to
approximately 30 to 40 people.
!------------------- ----- ------------------- !
The peoples who built Stonehenge were far from being idiotic, had already elites with
relatively wide knowledge, as the discovery made in May 2002 by Andrew Fitzpatrick proves
it. The grave of a man having lived 2.300 years before our era and located five kilometers
away from Stonehenge, close to Amesbury. The grave contained more than 100 objects,
what forms the richest collection ever found in this period. Three copper knives, some flint
arrowheads, some protections for the wrists, five bell-shaped ceramics, two braids of golden
hair, particularly,were found. These braids are the oldest golden artifacts found to date in
Great Britain.The analysis of dental enamel of Amesbury’s archer shows that he was a native
of the alpine areas, probably Switzerland, Austria or Germany. The copper knives found in
his grave came from Spain and France. The archer apparently was an important man, and as
he lived during the period matching the beginning of the construction of the famous megalithic
monument, archaeologists think that he could be involved in his building.According to Andrew
Fitzpatrick, during this period, Great Britain had experienced big changes, with the arrival on
the island, coming from the continent, of the know-how necessary to the work of metals. What
would explain the building of great monuments such as Stonehenge. The discovery of this
archer on the British soil is important in this respect and confirms this thesis. It was not
possible to establish a direct causal relationship between the archer in question and
Stonehenge. What seems certain, on the other hand, it is that the presence of his grave
proves that this character had a rather close link with the building of Stonehenge as well as
with that of Woodhenge, Durrington Walls or Avebury. He was to be a distinguished character
in the area and it is fascinating to think that a foreigner probably a native of current
Switzerland - could play an important role in the building of the most famous archeological
site in Great Britain.The presence of the grave of the Amesbury archer seems well to be very
closely dependent on the erection of the stones of Stonehenge. Perhaps did he play a key
part in the construction of the monument? Or perhaps was he attracted towards the south of
England precisely because of the building of the monument?
The emergence of war during prehistoric times is a recurring subject. Synthetic analysis of the
signs of sudden deaths observed in the Neolithic burials in France, and supplemented by
recent data gotten during excavations in Germany, Austria as well as in the Iberian Peninsula;
raises the question of the appearance of a real climate of collective violence within the first
farmer communities of Europe.
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These tensions leading to violent clashes could meet several factors (which could be even
combined between them). Factual causes related to disputes about territory limits. Economic
motivations for example the taking of wealth through the raid system. Lastly, social reasons,
because the victorious conflict is a demonstration of the power of a community on another,
and it thus always reinforces the prestige of the group or of his chief.
The things hardly changed since, and the same motivations which livened up the prehistoric
men lead those of today.
One wonders well finally indeed why the French president of the time, in 2011, chose to
support Alassane Ouattara, who’s some racists in uniform (of the republican forces) had
slaughtered, with the complicity of the UN troops in Ivory Coast, hundreds of unfortunate one,
only because they were Gueré, particularly at the end of March in Duekoue in the west of the
country; and not Lawrence Gbagbo whose partisans, without uniform it is true, have burned
alive some Muslimss, and whose armed forces tried to take again by indiscriminate shelling
the district of Abobo fallen into the hands of the invisible commando of Ibrahim Coulibaly (who
will be liquidated besides by his ex-ally Alassane Ouattara just after his victory).Some
consider these exactions made by the pro-Gbagbo forces made 3 or 4 times less civilian
victims than those made by the troops of Alassane Ouattara supported by Nicolas Sarkozy of
Nagy-Bocsa, all official and operating therefore in uniform what is more.Because Alassane
Ouattara was married to a (big) white woman???The French force Unicorn which operated in
Ivory Coast with a UN mandate is not free from reproaches. What Amnesty notes, it is that the
French soldiers of Unicorn did not do anything when members of the entourage of Lawrence
Gbagbo, among whom Philippe Henri Dacoury-Tabley, the former governor of the Central
Bank of the States of West Africa (Bceao), were beaten at the time of their arrest on April 11th
in the presidential residence of Cocody.According to a witness of the arrest of Lawrence
Gbagbo quoted in the report, the Icrf “began to strike the men and the women with pieces of
wood and with their butts. Others filmed them and photographed them as freaks of nature.
There were French soldiers of the Unicorn force who were in front of the residence, in their
vehicles or their tanks, and they did not intervene. They were there as when one goes to the
cinema and that one looks at a movie.”After the reading of the report, a crucial question
remains asked, did the international forces, show themselves partisans in Ivory Coast?
Amnesty International does not give its opinion on this point. But one remains on this
impression of a great uneasiness. That reminds of the Rwandan tragedy in 1994, where the
UN troops and the Operation Turquoise Forces have practically resigned, somewhat making
the genocide easier by their cowardice, their laxity, their wait-and-see policy.
Alassane Ouattara asked the International penal court for investigation in the West of the
country. We, we think that it is necessary to investigate into all that happened since 2002 if
we want to really bring the inhabitants of the Ivory Coast back together. If things stay the
same, we prepare new violence. We feel today that the Ivory Coast crisis is behind us. But
nothing is settled,” Salvatore Sagues announced.The truth perhaps is that we will never know
why, caught (or not) between a rock and a hard place, Nicolas Sarkozy 1st had chosen
between these two evils. The rock! Or the hard place! The future will say it to us. But what
does not leave with an increased stature in all that, it is the honesty or the sincerity of
democracies, of France, as well as the credibility of UNO besides.
In any case what is sure it is that Alassane Ouattara, and this with the complicity of the
French president in question, has bet to rely heavily on the Baule (an ethnic group of the
Center of the Ivory Coast) and Malinke of North against the people of the South, in particular
the Bété, who did not vote for him. And that his first head of government (or prime minister),
Guillaume Soro, had a lot of blood on his hands!
We may also wonder for what reasons the great Western democracies like France Qatar
Saudi Arabia the United Kingdom and the United States, saw fit in 2011, to wage war against
Gaddafi's Libya?
So that the Berber language and culture in Nefusa Mountains even their flag are legally
established in Libya?
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Or to put in power in this country some ex-Gaddafi's accomplices or some men resulting from
reactionary backgrounds, some Islamists, monarchists, matured in departments, even within
secret services?
The eagerness of the French diplomacy to woo the insurgents after having wooed Gaddafi
during ten years is at the very least questionable. Through humanism and to make the human
rights progress, it will be said. Yes, but then why not have declared war on China since a long
time, why have also encouraged Iraqis to replace the secularism of their constitution, of
Saddam Hussein time, by the recognition of Islam as the official religion of the Iraqi State (its
article 2 bans the promulgation of laws contrary to the principles of Islam). To finish ousting
from this country the last Christians resulting from the initial Christianity? Why finally bomb
Tripoli or Sirte (a town destroyed by NATO in 2011) and not Damascus or Sana’a even
Riyadh and Islamabad? Typically French principle of the “double standard “.And besides to
begin, why then, hardly a few years earlier, have rolled out the red carpet before all these
dictators (Gaddafi, Bashar, Hu Jintao) and have shaken their hand almost while patting on the
back familiarly, in Paris? To turn against them and set very hard and while ganging up (15?
24?) on these small dictators, looks a little coward or back stab (it would have been
necessary to never come on buddy-buddy with them!)
In any case the “National Transition Council” which was set up in Benghazi is not indeed
made up of “young spring chicken.” In addition to some key figures of the Gaddafi regime who
felt the wind change , it comprises the “National Front for the salvation of Libya” which since
a long time has its seat in Saudi Arabia and which is the false nose of the fundamentalist
ones, the “Libyan Committee for the defense of democracy and human rights” which has its
headquarters in London and Washington, the “union of the monarchists” which has his
headquarters in Cairo and federates the interests of the important tribal confederation of the
Senussi, hostile to the Gaddafi family. One even saw reappearing at the head of the
insurgent soldiers, left we do not know too much from where, the colonel Khalifa Belqasim
Haftar that the English in the Eighties had made responsible for the setting up in Libya of a
dissident force against the regular army.”
An excellent example of misinformation practiced by the journalists, this Reuters dispatch of
June 18, 2011, and headlined: Gun battles in Libya's Nalut kill 8-rebels (reporting by Joseph
Nasr, writing by Tim Cocks).We learn only in the body text that the loyalist forces too, had 45
dead. In the eyes of Tim Cocks, loyalist dead indeed are less important than rebellious
dead.More serious: if my memory is good there were no longer loyalist soldiers in Nalut
since...since...If there was reconquest of Nalut meanwhile by Gaddafist forces, that was never
pointed out...Most probable is that there was therefore an attack of the loyalist forces on Nalut
and that this one was stopped just after having succeeded in setting foot in the city.But the
journalists never presented things like that.See also for example what was said that at the
time by Donatella Rovera, one of the specialists for Amnesty International as concerns this
area of the world: she did not see mercenaries but immigrants of sub-Saharan Africa, no
direct witnesses as regards the mass rapes, and she brings to our attention also finally
abductions of internal security members of whom the corpses are found thereafter with bound
hand and foot, a bullet in their head, with a word of the kind “Gaddafi's dog”) near them.
That Gaddafi is a whimsical and predator dictator who would not have hesitated to drown the
rebellion in blood, there is no doubt. And his leaving will not pain anybody. But he is far from
being the only one in the world in this case, example in Bahrain where the Saudi armored
tanks subdued a revolt of the Shia majority against their Sunni emir in the widespread
indifference of the Western media and the West quite witnessed, with grounded arms,
without saying anything, many other episodes of this kind in Sudan, Ivory Coast, Yemen. UN
decided on giving an intervention mandate in Libya, but there also existed in Sudan or in Ivory
Coast. The UN mandate for Libya was relatively clear but its application experienced drifts
which can only cause greatest anxieties about the future of this institution (they mainly
discredited UN and NATO for a long time). The way in which the rebels treated the
immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa (black) or the elements of the regular troops made
prisoners (whether they were Libyan citizens or not) is particularly dreadful. They should have
been treated as prisoners of war by rebels and so regarded by the journalists who preferred
to ignore them. Woe to the vanquished is well the only international law always
applied including by the journalists who cowardly block and act as a distorting prism, focused
according to their own Manichean convictions in fact, between the reality of this world,
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besides complex, and the public (of Aesop’s tongue they know only one end) while claiming
the opposite, of course. See the WikiLeaks cable of the American embassy in Paris. This
biased and on the quiet, selection of information, by journalists, explains therefore why our
Mankind today is still not able to understand most important trends threatening it (exhaustion
of the planet resources, pollution, climate warming, increasing disappearance of the
languages and of the cultures which make the richness of the common inheritance of our
species, rise of religious totalitarianism, decline, multiculturalism = zero-culturalism…).
But like Alan Juppe, the French Foreign Minister, had well said it: “the only negotiation is war;
there is only the force which matters to make Gaddafi leaves!” Let us note incidentally that the
philosophical vocabulary of Mankind was enriched with new very interesting concepts. You
wage no longer war, you put pressure to protect civilians! Although there are good and bad
civilians. The bad ones you can bomb them. And finally this treasure (of cynicism): “Gaddafi
has not been able to protect his people (against whom? Against NATO bombs?) Therefore he
has no longer legitimacy!” If it is not there to base everything, particularly legitimacy, on
power and force, what it is therefore?
But let us leave there all these today prehistoric men Messrs. Juppe Sarkozy Cameron and
Company) as well as their incredible cynicism and let us return to those of yesterday who at
least were not in addition hypocritical (less two-faced bastards as the ex-minister or state
secretary, I don’t remember, Luke Ferry, would say)!
The really proven cases of sudden death or slaughters, remain finally very few within the first
farming societies in Western Europe, and it seems therefore premature to want to call war, in
the full senses of the word, these brawls between peoples. This collective violence was
probably only the draft of the true wars that appeared only during the Bronze Age. When were
formed real warlike weapon sets around a specific armament particularly defensive - and
that a full military caste rose in the society.
In 1991, two hikers left for the ascent of the Similaun Glacier located at 3.300 m of altitude, on
the border between Italy and Austria, in the massif of Italian Dolomites; have discovered in
the ice, a prehistoric man frozen since more than five thousand years.We will never know who
exactly the man of Similaun was nor what he did at 3.300 m of altitude, on the other hand, the
excellent preservation of his body, as well as all objects found, provided us a lot of
information. Thanks to him, we know today a little more about the daily life of the men of the
Neolithic era. This ice mummy had revolutionized our knowledge over the period since the
man was extracted from this ice with all the objects he had. We now have a precise idea of
the way in which the men got dressed at the end of the Neolithic era, circa 3.200 years before
our era.Otzi, when he died, was a man approximately 40-50 years old, one meter sixty tall for
a weight of approximately forty-five kilograms. He was rather athletic and was to be muscular.
He had brown dark, slightly wavy, rather short (the minimal length is nine centimeters) hair.A
few weeks before his death, he had suffered an “accident” and had his nose, as well as ribs,
broken.Specialists discovered to him osteoarthritis on the level of the neck, of the hip, of lower
limbs, and on the level of the feet articulations. To all that a parasitosis of bowels comes to be
added, a parasitosis perhaps rather current at that time. As he was to suffer from intestinal
pains, he treated himself, because pieces of a mushroom growing on birch, the Polypore
(Piptoporus betulinus) known to destroy the worms and their eggs, and to act as a
laxative,was found on him.The study of the contents of the intestines of Otzi reveals that
during his last two meals he had eaten cereals, as well as some meat of stags and of ibex.
The oldest tattoos known in the world.The examination of the body made it possible to detect
about fifteen tattoos, located, generally, on not very visible places of his body. They were
done using a black pigment made of charcoal rubbed on scratches, and are comparable to
other analog therapeutic practices attested by ethnography as well as old sources.They were
small groups of lines parallel or laid out in cross on his lumbar ones, knees and ankles. These
very simple tattoos (cross or lines) are to date the oldest we know. These tattoos do not seem
to be decorative elements.The analysis of their positions highlights a fact, nine of them
matched to acupuncture points! This discovery therefore moves back perhaps of 2000 years
the age of this discipline. It would have existed in various civilizations for finally being
preserved only by Chinese. Some of these tattoos are located along the meridian line of
kidneys in order to be able to treat back pains. Five other tattoos are located on the meridian
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lines of the gall bladder, of the spleen and of the liver, to treat bowel pains.They are therefore
perhaps therapeutical-oriented tattoos, indicating the places on which to exert pressure in
order to treat the various diseases from which Otzi suffered. But nothing is sure for the
moment.The precise causes of his death too are remained rather mysterious for a long time.
Thanks to the last analyzes, specialists could show that many of his wounds had been made
by weapons. He has no mark of fractures; the cranial wounds were made after his death,
perhaps by a carrion feeder. On the other hand, he has a deep wound to his right hand, which
was gashed to the tendon. He was also reached by an arrow close to his left shoulder.
Moreover, blood was found on his cape and his weapons.
What this man did, on the top of this glacier?He was warmly dressed. He had his head
covered with a cap in brown bear fur, kept by a knot under the chin.He wore a jacket made of
goatskins bent together using animal sinews or wool thread, as well as a waterproof
windbreak cape made of grass stems more than one meter long (alpine grasses).He had a
belt in calfskin; a pocket is visible on its front. This belt is also used to hold kinds of gaiter or
leggings in a goatskin, which have at their ends a strip that can be introduced into shoes, in
order to keep warm. The belt also holds a loincloth made of a very thin goatskin, it hangs
down to his knees ensuring in this way a protection for the pocket of his belt.His shoes are
made up of a sole and of a vamp in leather, the inside is made of braided grass, it contains
straw being used as insulating material.
As regards his kitting out, he carried a basket or a backpack made up of a frame in hazel tree
stem.He also has a net of which the precise use is not defined.He is equipped with two small
containers or cylindrical boxes in birch bark; apparently, one of them was used to keep
embers, traces of coal having been discovered.A small calfskin bag containing three flint
tools: a scraper, a small much sharpened blade as well as an awl. Tiny traces of fluff found on
the blade let us think that it was used to make the fletching of arrows.Another including the
necessities to make a fire: some mushrooms of tinder fungus at which are fixed pyrite
crystals, what let specialists think that he had a lighter.He had also taken hunting weapons. It
was known that the people of the Neolithic era used the bow, but without knowing the
characteristics of them. Now it is done!Otzi’s bow is a long bow 1 m 80 long, made of yew
wood. Its quiver is made of chamois leather and of a hazel tree rod; it contains 14 arrows of
which some are provided with a flint head. The shafts are in viburnum shoot, more than 80
centimeters long. Interesting detail, the front part is slightly larger than the back part, in order
to ensure a good stability. The end of the arrow is provided with a notch to receive a
head.The quiver also contains two meters long rope made of bark fiber; it is probably a string
for this bow.The arrow heads are stuck using tar mainly made of birch, the whole is
strengthened by animal sinew. Two arrows are complete and have radial shaped fletching
with three feathers, it is fixed by tar and a very thin thread tightened in a spiral.The quiver also
contains four pieces of antlers tied with vegetable fiber, which could be a raw material being
used to make arrows.He has a tool with an angular handle, endowed with a sharp tip. It is still
blood stained; therefore it could be an instrument designed to skin or to gut an animal.He has
an axe with a handle made of yew wood. The blade is fixed at the handle by a split opened in
this one, the whole is surrounded by wet leather strips, which while drying contract and
ensure a solid keeping of the ensemble. This axe was out of copper and not out of iron, but
the axes of this time are generally out of polished stones and very seldom made of metal.On
the other hand, on the contrary, the dagger which he bore in his belt was also not out of
polished stone, but out of flint worked in a rather coarse way, with a handle out of ash wood.
In other words, on the one hand, he had an object very precious for the time: a copper axe;
on the other hand, he had a dagger made in a very mediocre way. The dagger sleeve was an
assemblage of plaits made of thin pieces of vegetable fibers.
What do we have concrete now about “the Otzi case”“?Otzi was kitted out as a hunter gone
into expedition or…like a warrior gone into a campaign.This kitting out enables him some
autonomy, but it seems that in fact, it was incomplete. What let us suppose that he did not
expect to go to the mountain or that if he does it; he had to make this decision in an
unrehearsed way, as a last resort.
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Moreover, he is alone, which is normal neither in a hunting party, nor in a brawl, except if he
is the “game” or a chased fugitive.His bow was out of order and he was busy in making a new
one with makeshift means. His quiver was damaged.He has deep wounds to his right hand
which were inflicted on him a few hours only before his death; he also has a fractured right
wrist.He has wounds even more serious in the thorax region; a flint arrowhead went right
through his left shoulder blade and had entered his chest, this arrow made a hole having a
two centimeters diameter.We can undoubtedly retain the hypothesis of a fight, of a brawl. But
why?
Is Otzi a chief ageing and on the decline, whose authority was challenged by one or several
younger and ambitious members of his tribe? This possibility cannot be excluded, because he
had an axe with a copper blade, thing rare and envied at that time, but we may also suppose
that he took over this weapon during a fight.In all the cases, Otzi had to face an attack by
several men probably. He takes some blows, defends himself as he can, strikes with his bow
and wards off with the latter. His bow breaks, he has his right hand seriously wounded, his
quiver having received a violent blow dealt by an adversary, it is damaged as well as the
arrows it contains.Being overwhelmed by numbers, he finds safety only in flight. He has
perhaps also dealt serious blows on one or several adversaries whose anger intensifies, and,
seeing their prey running away, decide to track him like an animal.By the time they reorganize
themselves, Otzi pulled ahead of them. But where he can go to escape his pursuers, he
thinks of the mountain, the territory is familiar to him, because during the good season, he
leads in it his animals, besides he does not have another choice. The hunters are younger
and faster than him, and he suffers from the wound of his right hand as well as of his broken
wrist, preventing him from now on going into action against his adversaries more determined
than ever.In the course of the pursuit, Otzi is one moment within reach of arrows; one of his
adversaries shoots one of them at him whereas he turns his back and hurts him in the left
scapula, causing the wound we know.It is possible that Otzi tried to remove this arrow, but its
head weakened by the shock or badly fixed, remains in the wound. The pursuers annoyed
understand that they will no longer find him again and give up the hunt.Otzi arrived in the
mountain, suspects well that his adversaries lost their grip because of the snowstorm, he
suffers, he is cold, his wounds strongly weakened him, and he is on his last legs.Being no
longer able to continue walking, he finds a summary shelter against the icy wind while hiding
in a natural excavation in the ground. Snow begins to cover him, he is tired, he needs to
sleep, and he drifts then sinks little by little in a semi-comatose state.At an altitude more than
three thousand meters in mountains, freezing will very quickly change the snow covering Otzi
into an ice sarcophagus. So guarded against the external injury of the environment he will
resurface only more than five thousand three hundred years later.
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COPPER AGE (CHALCOLITHIC OR ENEOLITHIC).
Copper and stones. As its name says it, this period, the Chalcolithic or Eneolithic, is divided
between the continuation of the lithic work which remains dominant, and the appearance of
new materials, copper, but also gold.The gradual passage from a food strategy only based
on the collection of food products in natural environment, to a more diversified economy
where farming and taming of animals made it possible for men to be less dependent on the
environment in which they moved; was little by little followed by important socioeconomic
changes. Since there were agriculture, breeding and settling process, people gathered to
form village communities.The relative stability of the housing at the same time as the
necessary periodic regrouping for joint work contributed in giving rise to complex social
structures and to make the emergence of “leaders “as well as holders of specialized know-
how, easier. An advanced community life, related to the recognition of favored individuals (or
lineages), will reverberate on the funerary behaviors, on the perception of the sacredness as
on the definition of collective identities.Constant technological advances, a gradual
diversification and a specialization of activities, made it possible to increase productivity, what
generated a population increase besides. The inexorable rise of these societies led to the
arrival of copper metallurgy, hence the qualifier “Chalcolithic” for these copper civilizations.
As soon as 4.500 before our era, the men in the Levant realize that by melting certain rocks
(they are ores), they get a soft and malleable material under heat, which becomes resistant
and very hard while getting colder. When it is well modeled under heat, this material (metal) is
more effective than the cut or polished stone.The first trials come down to work by hammering
the ore made soft by heating, but soon, the control of the high temperatures made man able
to melt some increasingly resistant metals.
Native copper was heated to separate it from its gangue in pottery kilns. Then progress of
kilns enabled the molding, as some Iranian crucibles showed it, as soon as the fourth
thousand years before our era. They were, however, more pits than furnaces.
Chalcolithic art.
Stone work goes on, particularly with the making of very beautiful axes out of flint, flat and
elongated. Out of copper, we find daggers, but also ornaments (as well female as male).
Corded ware ceramic is characteristic of this period, particularly beakers with a high neck in
funnel (typical of the North of Europe).
As for the previous period, art seems to be restricted to the embellishment of individuals and
usual objects. Carving and chasing, and work of the shapes, show an aesthetic research for
the products of the everyday life, even if the Middle Chalcolithic seems to have been less
sophisticated in Western Europe than the two other periods. We find in the burials, electrum
and gold sheets, which proves a certain refinement.Let us not forget finally that this
impression of absence or of little importance of art is perhaps only the consequence of the
loss of the objects out of perishable materials.
In fact, the passage to Copper Age is defined especially by an increasingly marked social
differentiation; particularly visible through the appearance of rich graves and prestige objects,
the building of fortifications around structured built-up areas, the appearance of temples and
of shrines and of a network of long-distance trade.To transport the ore which was rare, some
networks of exchanges on the scale of Europe and Central Asia are organized. Regarding the
social level, the age of the first metals seems therefore marked by an acceleration of the
organization into a hierarchical order of society. The wars of the Neolithic time become more
frequent, and the arms race enabled by the metal control precisely.
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ARYANS OR INDO-EUROPEANS.
The concept was born from an observation. The languages of almost all the people of Europe
(Slavic, Baltic, Germanic, Celt, Latin, Greek, Albanian, Armenian), as well as these of certain
people of Asia (Northern India, Iran), show similarities, as well lexical as morphological; which
can be explained only by a common origin. Since the 19th century, the linguists endeavor to
reconstruct the mother language of all these languages, called common Indo-European.
The proto-Indo-European unity necessarily dates back to a very old early time. It is known
indeed that Iranian and Indo-Aryan, two branches of the Aryan subfamily, separated during
the third thousand years before our era. The Aryan subfamily (also called Indo-Iranian) was
itself resulting from the split of the proto-Indo-European unit, which was to date therefore at
least from the fourth thousand years before our era. The existence of people speaking a
language known as “Indo-European” therefore dates back to the Neolithic era.We have a little
idea of these civilizations in the pictures which remain to us about them: for example, some
warriors on horseback, with combat axes, daggers…We also have an idea of them through
the vocabulary, particularly the one that expresses the family relationship, in which we see
that the relationship vocabulary remains centered on man (the husband), and that the kinship
takes precedence over the alliance. The initial Indo-European family is patrilineal (the
succession took place from a father to his son), patrilocal (the wife comes to settle in the
husband’s dwelling); the unity is done by the male family relationship, and the leader is the
oldest man of the elder branch. We find the prevalence of the same vocabulary in Latin,
Germanic, Indian, etc. languages which followed, in connection with the customs.One also
draws lessons from the religious, legal and political, vocabulary, which shows the existence of
a kingship having religious and legal prerogatives.The lexicon is also rich in names of
domestic animals, but poor in names of wild animals or crop plants, what shows that they
were breeders, and not farmers.The area of origin is located north of the Black Sea. It is the
civilization known as Kurgan civilization (Russian Jamna, English pit grave, civilization).The
Kurgan (Russian word of Turkish origin) is a funerary mound, a collective burial, containing
sometimes hundreds corpses.The Irish bards who have composed the Book of Conquests
during the Middle Ages would there not have been completely wrong while locating elsewhere
in Scythia (sic) the cradle of their distant Celtic ancestors.
From his area in the world, three successive waves of invaders would go away, towards India
and Europe.They were warlike, semi-nomadic, peoples, with a very hierarchical society ruled
by the head of the family (the pater familias in Latin language). These men “will meet” the
people already present on the spot in Europe between 4000 and 3000 before our era. To
meet that means to face, but not only; the two civilizations will more or less merge, for
example with regard to their mythologies.
In Russia, on the middle course of the Volga River, there was a civilization known as
Khvalynsk, resembling that of Sredni Stog II, but older, because dating back to - 5 000 - 4
500. It is there that Proto-Indo-Europeans would have lived.Around - 4500, they would have
increased their territory towards the west, i.e., towards Ukraine, where they would have
founded the culture of Sredni Stog or Seredny Stih II. Their main known settlement is that of
Dereivka, on the Dnieper River. It was a village which was inhabited from 4 200 to 3
700. A kind of fence delimited it. The archaeologists found there two rectangular buildings,
partially buried, largest being 136 m long (on another site, there were half-underground
huts).We may reasonably suppose that these large houses (also standing in Andronovo
civilization) were in fact cattle sheds or stables and that men lived in huts. What would
therefore attest to the practice of the cattle husbandry or of the horse breeding, known of all
the Indo-Europeans.Its inhabitants cultivated corn as well as millet but also practiced the
animal husbandry, by order of importance horses, cattle, sheep and goats, as well as swine.
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The horses were eaten, but a buried cranium shows a tooth wear due to a bit: this animal
therefore had been mounted. Bits made of antlers were found besides. Dead were powdered
with ocher and were buried in simple pits sometimes topped by a small funerary hillock.
Remains of horses or cattle frequently accompanied them.It is from - 3.500 that the kurgans
developed truly, particularly within the civilization of Mikhaylovka (from - 3 600 to - 3 000) on
the lower course of the Dnieper River, or more south in the Crimea Peninsula. These mounds
could be surrounded by a stone circle, typically Indo-European habit. It was a border
separating the world of the Living of the Other World.The civilization of Mikhaylovka belongs
to a vaster group that of the pit graves (Jamna), dated back from - 3 600 to - 2.200. At its
peak in the third thousand years (period “Kurgan IV” in the terminology of Marija Gimbutas), it
occupied a huge area, going in the west to the mouth of the Danube and in the east to the
Ural River. It had therefore an extension of 3.000 km. Such a civilization could not be uniform,
various variants are consequently distinguished.In addition to gold and silver, the only known
metal of these people was copper, *ayos-. They did not have a word to designate iron. The
pit-grave civilization is therefore a copper civilization by definition (it practiced only copper
metallurgy). Unlike bronze and iron, the craft industry of copper seems to have coexisted very
long time with that of stone, without bringing real socioeconomic upheavals in civilizations
which practiced it. It is also attested by archaeology that the use of copper concerns
civilizations contemporary and neighboring others which are unaware of it, or which have
already a bronze metallurgy. The weak incidence of copper on the prehistoric civilizations can
be explained by the difficulties or the weak advantages of its working. Collected in small
quantities in a natural state, native copper is hammered before being molten and is molded at
1.000 °C approximately. The production is anecdotal compared to the stone industry, and
concerns mainly pieces with modest dimensions. At the same time, the stone productions are
also often finer.
Some settlements were protected by stone ramparts, but an intensive practice of breeding, in
steppe zones, could involve the appearance of a form of nomadism. An essential means of
transportation appeared: vehicles with wheels. The very first one was found in a grave, on the
lower Dnieper River. It is dated back to - 2.900 with a margin of error of 400 years. The
ancestors of the Indo-Europeans therefore used vehicles with wheels and they had a whole
vocabulary related to it, as *kwekwlo- “wheel,” derived from the verb *kwel- “to turn.”All that
therefore had to quicken or support the movements of peoples which reach, during the third
thousand years, an exceptional scale. It was no longer question this time of colonization of
spaces up to now practically uninhabited, but of the seizure of territories which were already
occupied, at least partially.The pit-grave civilization then expanded at the same time towards
the Central Europe and Asia, what explains the distribution of the Indo-European peoples. It is
towards the Central Asia, territory of future Indo-Iranians and Tocharians (current province of
Xinjiang in China) that this expansion is clearest.In their diversity, these invasions have
common characteristics. They never set in motion vast peoples of warriors. There are bold
small groups, strongly organized, establishing their order on the ruin of the former social
structures. Obviously, they know neither the sea nor the cities. They have no writing, neither
complicated religion, nor any refinement. All will preserve, throughout their particular destiny,
the distinctive features of their primary community : patriarchal structure of the “great family,
united in the worship of ancestors, living on land and breeding; aristocratic style of a society
of priests, of warriors or of farmers; nature worships and royal sacrifices (of which most
significant is that of a horse, the Vedic Asvamedha, the Celtic Epomeduos); conquering
instinct and taste of great spaces; sense of authority as well as attachment to earthly
possessions.The men of Sredni Stog or Seredny Stih II were in relation, in the west, with the
civilization of Cucuteni-Trypillia (Tripolje in Russian); which was formed in Romania as soon
as the seventh thousand years and had developed towards Moldavia or the south-west of
Ukraine.Civilizations located more in the west, along the Danube, resembled it, like those of
Gumelnitsa (in Romania) and Vinsha (in Serbia). It was a very advanced technical civilization,
which had true cities: one of them covered 400 hectares and comprised 2.700 houses. Some
of these dwellings comprised floors. Potter workshops were found on the site and even a
kind of artisan district. The baking temperatures could reach 1.200 ° C. An application of
powder of graphite or gold was made on certain vases. Worship buildings are attested.
Female statuettes designed to be fixed upright on bases were also to have a worship
significance.
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The men of the pit graves stopped therefore the development of a civilization which could
have had a very bright future, but were they necessarily only “barbarians” compared to the
Danube men? The level of civilization can’t be measured only with the yardstick of the
architectural achievements nor with the control of pottery even of metallurgy. The level of
civilization can also be measured with the yardstick of intellectual or spiritual life. The men of
pit graves could very well have priests who lived in a rustic way, but devoted themselves to
deep philosophical speculations, just like the druids later. Archaeology cannot, alas, give us
information on this subject.At the beginning, these first Indo-Europeans therefore seem to be
absorbed in the mass of the often more civilized peoples they subdue. A long silence follows
their conquest. But soon, from the new order they found, a civilization, initially loaded with
local elements, springs up, then developing, thereafter, in increasingly newer and audacious
forms. An inventive force marks these creations, to which the language of the rulers confers
most completed expression. The appropriation of land by invaders increasingly newer, but all
resulting from the same stock, thus creates the conditions of a flexible and assimilative
political organization; the centers of a civilization, vigorous enough to survive those who
worked out it, original enough to pervade durably even what is opposed to it (E. Benveniste.
Quotation according to my rough draft, of notes).These waves of peopling mark the beginning
of the Indo-Europeanization of Central Europe.Sometimes come from rather remote areas,
endowed with a powerful armament, these men showed great mobility. They had a very
structured collective way of life which strengthened their cohesion and carried out their
prestige with the indigenous peoples met in ways. This economic change is accompanied by
a reorganization of the supernatural guarantors of these societies. The latter reject the
ideologies of their Neolithic neighbors, where the worship of female deities appears to play a
great part. And strengthen the power of their dead by developing the worship of the ancestors
illustrated by the collective graves as well as by the offerings which accompany them.After
having left the vast plains in the east of Europe, the peoples known as “battle axe“ or “corded
ware ceramic“ culture; generally regarded as the main Indo-European wave; settle in various
areas located between Scandinavia and Switzerland.The civilization of corded ware ceramic
or battle axe is a Chalcolithic or Eneolithic civilization (= copper) of the 25th century before
our era, which stretches from Russia to Poland, to Switzerland, in the north to Scandinavia,
and to British Isles. It is limited in France to the Vosges and the upper Saone Basin. Many
specialists think that the people of corded ware ceramic would be the oldest known Indo-
Europeans.The civilization of corded ware ceramic owes its name to the production of
ceramic ware decorated by print of thin cords on raw clay (before baking). Their axes are out
of polished stone, with central perforation. They could be imitations of certain models of
copper axes.Peoples of the civilization of corded ware ceramic (or corded peoples) are
wandering shepherds (husbandry of horses) who bury their dead in individual burials under
mounds. They are characterized by a very strict funerary rite different according to the sexes,
in which the late one is accompanied by the ultimate parade weapon, the polished stone axe -
sometimes out of copper - as well as pottery making up a drinking set. The body of the late
lies in contracted position (fetal position). The swing plow and the oxen make their
appearance. The wheel is used more and more (votive chariots in Hungary, solid wheels out
of wood in the peat bogs of the Netherlands).These axe warriors are attested as soon as the
third thousand years in Ukraine, in Moldavia, in the Balkans as in the upper valley of the
Danube, which they invade three times; and where they mix to the peoples of Neolithic
farmers, present as soon as the seventh thousand years, already very civilized, living in
villages or in cities, and making a beautiful painted pottery (the first Indo-European wave
according to Colin Renfrew. See below).
Part of these groups settled in Central Europe - known as “bell beaker culture”- continued the
progression towards the West and successively reached the shores of the Atlantic to the
Straits of Gibraltar, the British Isles and the Western Mediterranean Sea. These skillful
metallurgists, armed with bows, played a crucial role in the formation of the direct ancestors of
the historical peoples of Central and Western Europe, particularly of the Celts.The bringing
together of peoples commonly known as bell-beaker civilization is defined in the beginning
compared to the common use of a particular style of pottery, in the shape of an inverted bell.
The use of this pottery could have a connection with the consumption of mead or beer.
Because of the unusual and practically unchanged shape of the batteries on all the
geographical surface of distribution of the beaker civilization, the latter was therefore ascribed
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at the beginning to a single group of peopling, which would have spread in Europe. A
spreading by migration and not by acculturation. At the beginning of the 20th century, the bell-
shaped pottery was indeed perceived like the element characteristic of one people, which
through repeated waves of invasion would have brought the work of metal, burials in fetal
position and mounds. While therefore replacing the preceding Neolithic peoples who lived
there.
OTHER HYPOTHESES.
This type of interpretation is given up today, so much it reduces some cultural changes to the
same cause, and that, over a period of several hundred years. Indeed, there is not
necessarily correlation between an archeological civilization and a precise ethnic group. As
there is also not necessarily bijective relation between typical objects resulting from
archeological excavations and a single group of peopling. In fact, any cultural material or
technological innovation can be very well spread independently of an original people, by
civilization spreading followed by a phenomenon of acculturation. It can be a gradually
spreading, from one people to another close people. But also a spreading to more or less
long distance following the exchange network already in place at the time of the Neolithic era,
for example for amber, obsidian or salt. A good example could be that of the exchanges
related to the production and the consumption of beer, similar to those shown by lucky finds
made along the roads of Atlantic Europe. Pollen analyzes, combined with the movements of
beaker civilization people, indicate a greater growth of the barley, which can be associated
with beer brewing.Some archaeologists note that the scattered geographical distribution of
the beaker civilization follows mainly major roads of transportation, including fords, river
valleys, mountainous ways… The whole suggesting that the pan-European style of the
beaker civilization could be originally due to bronze merchants, who would have settled
among local peoples of the Neolithic era or of Cooper Age (Chalcolithic, Eneolithic) thus
creating a new style. A fine analysis of the bronze tools used in beaker time suggests in the
beginning use of copper coming from Iberia then of ore coming from Central Europe and
Bohemia; that supposes a two-phase expansion of the beaker civilization, initially come from
the south-west of Europe, then spreading thereafter from the Central Europe.
Colin Renfrew’s assumption (approximately the opposite).
According to Colin Renfrew, the cradle of the Indo-European languages would not be located
above, but below the Black Sea, in Anatolia (east of current Turkey), and that, as soon as the
Neolithic time, circa 9.000 before our era. The “driving force” causing the expansion would be
the invention of agriculture and animal husbandry, in what is called Fertile Crescent. It is
known indeed that the transition from the state of hunter-gatherers to husbandry (farmer
breeders) made it possible the populations to strongly increase their number. That would
have therefore generated a very slow extension (about thirty kilometers to each generation),
towards the east and the west. Europe would have been reached circa 7.000 before our era,
these Indo-Europeans moving or assimilating the non-Indo-European peoples (hunter-
gatherers) perhaps fifty times fewer. The expansion and the diversification of the Indo-
European languages would therefore follow the spreading of agriculture and breeding: 6.000
years before our era in the Mediterranean West, 5 400 years before our era in Central
Europe, 3.000 in North and Western Europe.
This assumption encounters a serious obstacle: no known Indo-European language seems to
come from the Middle East. Moreover, the peoples in the Middle East, at the time of the
Neolithic era, ignored horses. They could not attach to them the importance we find among
the ancestors of Indo-Europeans (two words to designate this animal, a whole mythology
which refers to it, etc.). The remains of domestic animals found in the pit-grave civilization
come in majority from horses. In addition, the existence of a specifically Indo-European word
to designate copper, shows that Proto-Indo-Europeans knew this metal. The people of the
beginning of the Neolithic era were unaware of its existence.
A fact appears immediately: war was the main activity of the ancestors of Indo-Europeans.
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Proto-Indo-Europeans fought with bludgeons, lances, bows and arrows (the Yuezhi, who
were Tocharians, and the Scythians, were archers with an incredible skill). The pit graves
delivered many bludgeons, out of stones or porphyry, sometimes sculpted, as well as
abundant lance heads and arrowheads. We also found in these graves some long flint knives,
which evolved later to become swords. The presence of this whole armament shows that the
men of pit graves were warriors. They were, of course, to fight other peoples, but especially
between them. It was for them the way of living their life, to have a worthy life and a death. A
manner of fighting against oneself in a way, of dominating one’s fears and one’s weaknesses,
even of making fun of death and therefore of being a ruler of his destiny.Valerius Maximus,
memorable deeds and sayings, book II, Chapter VI, 11. “So the philosophy of...but that of the
Cimbrians and Celtiberians is lively and brave. They jump for joy when they are at war,
because they will leave this life in a glorious and happy way, but they lament them when they
are sick, because they will die in a disgusting and miserable way. The Celtiberians even think
it is a disgrace to survive a battle when their leader dies since they promised to protect him
with their lives” (therefore as well as the soldurii north of the Pyrenees if we have well
understood).Editor’s note. This warlike characteristic besides did not prevent Proto-Indo-
Europeans from having a very high sense of hospitality. It was even among them a sacred
value. Ireland besides preserved to us very precise laws on that subject (cf. the word briugu).
But the king was especially a warrior. The Greeks were at war two years out of three, and
their cities fought especially between them. Plundering was also regarded as a normal
activity: raids were organized in other tribes or other clans. To rustle cattle from an enemy
clan was a way of life much nobler than to cultivate the land. See particularly on this subject
the Irish saga (The rustling of the cows of Cooley). The walls of Proto-Indo-Europeans were
probably earth berms on which lines of stakes were driven in. They surrounded villages
called *woikos.
In Tocharian B, language spoken by a now disappeared people, the king was called walo,
word perhaps deriving from the root *welh- “to be strong” and corresponding to the Celtic
vlatos “sovereignty,” as well as to the Latin valens “powerful “. His power was perhaps more
symbolic than concrete. The important decisions could be taken by adult men assemblies,
who all were warriors. It seems that they had initially a legal function. In a way, the king
embodied the country. If he was sick or weakened, the people, even the whole world, could
suffer from that, and it is why one did not hesitate to eliminate old kings.The power of kings
was also limited by that of priests. One of the fundamental characteristics of Proto-Indo-
Europeans is to have generated a class of priests who opposed warriors. They took care in
particular of the respect of law. They did not live within the society, behind the ramparts, but in
nature. Their situation enabled them to transcend all the distinction between clans, tribes or
peoples. Herodotus mentions the Argippaioi, who was, of course, some Tocharian priests.
They did not have any weapon, but nobody would have had the idea to kill them, because
they were sacred, if somebody took refuge among them, he was safe from all his enemies.
They lived permanently at the foot of a tree, which they surrounded only of one felt in winter.
In the same way, Merlin, the prototype of the druid who lived far from the world, in the deep
forests and the caves.The principal task of the priests was, of course, to enable the link
between men and God-or-demons. They had the exclusiveness in the sacrifices. They were
the holders of the knowledge, which was conveyed in an exclusively oral form. The word was
sacred even magic. They are not the Indo-Europeans who invented writing, and when other
peoples had conveyed it to them, the priests refused it. Sacred texts like Vedas of the Indians,
or the Avesta of the Iranians, were learned by heart during thousand years before being
written down.Proto-Indo-Europeans could cultivate the land, but preferred the husbandry of
animals. The wealth was counted cattle. They reared horses, *markos or *ekwos, cattle,
*gwous, swine, *sû-, dogs, *kwôn-, as well as goats, but their name, in common Indo-
European, cannot be reconstructed. The intensive practice of breeding involved the
appearance of forms of nomadism: it was necessary to accompany the animals at the time of
transhumance. It is possible that the work of the land, badly considered, was entrusted to old
men as well as to women. It was for example the case among the Germanic tribes. Tocharian
documents mention old women and men as “workers.” In summer, among the Kalash, a
people in northern Pakistan speaking an Indo-Aryan language, and still polytheistic, men go
away on the altitude pastures with their herds, while women cultivate the fields, in the valleys,
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close to their villages. The society of Proto-Indo-Europeans was strongly patriarchal, the virile
values being sharpened. It was patrilineal: man was the son of his father and not of his
mother.
The religion of Proto-Indo-Europeans was cosmic: it had as a framework a tripartite
conception of the universe, the Sky, the Earth and the Hell. The great French mythologist
George Dumezil showed the existence, among all the Indo-European peoples we know, of
three functions with classifying value.
1. Spiritual, magic, religious or political, power.
2. Physical strength, being used mainly in war.
3. Fertility-fruitfulness, seduction linked to reproduction and wealth.
However he did not connect these three functions with the Three Worlds, whereas the
correspondence between the third function and Hell is obvious. Dead “inhabit” the earth and
carries out consequently the fertility of the land. See what Caesar wrote of the druidic Touta
Dis Pater, God-or-demon of death and wealth.The priests, representatives of the first function,
were celestial. Their color, white, was also that generally associated with the Sky. The Celts
worshiped their god-or-demons in sacred wood, nemeton, of which the name derived from
nemos “sky, celestial vault.” The glade was in a way a piece of sky projected on earth.Lastly,
the fact that the Earth, basically female, was linked to the physical strength, explains war
goddess-or-demonesses (among Proto-Indo-Europeans, it was not, of course, to the women,
to wage war). This goddess-or-demoness is recognizable in Athena among the Greeks,
Morrigan or Bodb among Irishmen, Durga among the Indians. A warrior reached the kingship
only because he binds himself by a solemn pact with this goddess-or-demoness, or good
fairy, represented really or mythically by his wife.
WHAT BIBLE SAYS ABOUT ALL THAT?
The Bible like the Quran besides, being, of course, not a book dictated nor even inspired by
God, for the simple reason, besides, that such a God could not exist (the first eleven chapters
of its Genesis are for example only a resumption wanting to be an improvement -
improvement very contestable besides of the fables about the origin of the World and of
the Man….According to Sumerians) but only a very heterogeneous compilation of texts from
various times (but, of course, not by Moses) from very various genres - laws, decrees, novels,
proverbs, myths, fables, pseudo-history, etc. - appearing in the library of King Josiah (- 640 -
609) and combined or changed at his instigation, even straightforwardly purely and simply
written under his reign by his scribes (the first version of the Deuteronomy, for example. Cf.
Jocelyn Rochat, a journalist in the Morning Sunday of Lausanne in Switzerland and Israel
Finkelstein). We will return to this.The Bible therefore is not a great help to us to recount the
history of all these Aryans of whom it knows only Hittites (sons of Het), Hivvites, Hurrians or
Khurrites, Philistines, and others (Perizzites and Girgashites remain , on the other hand, more
mysterious).
Some famous Jebusites.
According to Genesis Book, the king of Jerusalem in the time of Abraham would have been a
person by the name Melchizedek, and while being a king, he was also a priest. Later, Joshua
will be described to us as having defeated a Jebusite king named Adonizedek. The first part
of their names means respectively king and lord, but though the zedek word can be translated
as “righteous” (what would give us as names “my king is righteous” and “my lord is
righteous”), most biblical scholars believe that it is a reference to a deity named Zedek, who
was the main god worshiped by the Jebusites (what would give us as names thus “my king is
Zedek” and “my lord is Zedek”). Some authors therefore think that the temple of Solomon was
simply an almost natural evolution of the pagan shrine of Melchisedek.
Another Jebusite, Araunah (known as Ornan in the Book of Chronicles) is described by the
Books of Samuel as having sold his threshing floor to King David, threshing floor on which
this later then would have built an altar, which would perhaps become the core of the Temple
of Solomon. Araunah means “the lord” in Hittite, and it is why most scholars think Araunah
would have been another king of Jerusalem; some authors additionally believe that the
mention of Adonijah is in fact a reference to this Araunah, the Hebrew letter r having been
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changed into d. The narrative itself, however, is considered to be etiological and therefore of
dubious historicity.
Elsewhere in the Bible, the Jebusites are described to us in a manner that suggests that they
worshiped the same God (El Elyon) as the Hebrews. Some scholars even went as far as to
put forward the assumption, as Zadok appears in Samuel's text only after the conquest of
Jerusalem, that he was in fact a Jebusite priest co-opted by Hebrews.
The Books of the kings reports, once Jerusalem had become, in a way, the main city of
Hebrews that Jebusite survivors were reduced to the state of serfs by Solomon (who
apparently did not know yet the God of love). But it is perhaps there only an etiological legend
intended to provide an explanation to the institution of serfdom in the city. At all events we are
unaware of what became Jebusites thereafter; simplest is to imagine that they were then
assimilated. The supporters of the Jebusite assumption put forward that they ended up
constituting an important faction of the kingdom of Judah, including the public figure like priest
Zadok, prophet Nathan, like Bathsheba, the Queen Mother of King Solomon. According to this
assumption, after the disgrace of a rival faction at the time of the conflict for the succession of
King David, the family of Zadok the Jebusite would then have become the only official clergy
in Jerusalem. The Aaronite lineage ascribed to this Zadok would be a later and anachronistic
interpolation.
The Jebusites (founders of Jerushalimu/Jerusalem = the city of the god-or-demon Shalim) are
therefore perhaps to bring closer to Hittites or Iapodes/Iapyges (a Celtic-Illyrian people). They
would form therefore also and like the Philistines, a branch of the “Sea People” having
ventured into the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.What is certain; however, it is that these pagan
Jebusites built their city (Ur Shalem, the city of the god-or-demon Shalim, a Canaanite god-or-
demon of the sun, of the dusk, as well as of the evening star: Venus) beside a famous healing
spring; which will survive to them even after its occupation by the armed bands of King David
led by Joab. As the testimony of the Gospel proves it according to John 5, 2-4.
There is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool [Bethesda, Bethzeta, etc. some
archeological excavations made it possible to release its ruins. Editor’s note]. An angel of the
Lord [[the god-or-demon of this healing spring therefore, Editor’s note] went down at certain
seasons into the pool and stirred up the water; whoever then first, after the stirring up of the
water, stepped in was made well from whatever disease with which he was afflicted.”
!----------------- ------------------------------ -----------------------------------!
The Hittite is one of the first languages identified, around 2000 before our era, followed in the
east by Indo-Iranian, which generated Persian and Hindi. The traditional outline matches the
migration theory. It is based on the discovery of a homogeneous civilization, that of a people
from the steppes of Central Asia, of which we have traces in the sixth century before our
era.These “Steppe Riders” then will spread towards the south by conquering the Asianic
people of Anau; the mixing of this part of Proto-Indo-Europeans and of overcome settlers
generated Aryas.A thing is certain, as soon as the beginning of the third thousand years there
was no longer pure race in this area of the world; whereas the territories of these peoples
were, however, to be soon called “Airyanam vaeja” in the Iranian Avestan writing, “Aryavarta”
in the Indian Vedic writing, in other words, Aria or Aryana: the Homeland of Aryas.In Xinjiang,
in central Asia, the Indo-Europeans will remain until the tenth century before our era, in spite
of the Mongols and of the Chinese. In India, when Alexander the Great arrives on the banks
of the Indus River, they have been settled there for several centuries. So, their conquests are
spread out as well in the Eastern Basin as in the Mediterranean basin. These Indo-European
invasions indicate the end of stone ages and mark the beginning of copper and bronze
ages.In the west, we find the Greek as of the Mycenaean time (in the 15th century before our
era). Specialists situate before Iron Age (8th century) the separation of Italic languages (Latin,
Sabine, etc.) and of Celtic languages.
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LIGURIAN CASE.
Initial inhabitants of Western Europe, perhaps related to Chassean people, or to Beaker
people, or some Indo-European people; come off from the initial group of South Russia
several centuries before the general breakup.
Chassean people also decorated the stones: in the west of the Rhone, they engraved rocks
whereas in the East they painted rather the walls of the shelters (these walls mainly faced the
South and were of orange color).
The Ligurians (people of the standing stones statues) are probably the descendants of
Chassean people mixed with Megalithic people come from the Atlantic coasts.
At the end of the megalithic period, these peoples buried their dead in “round or oval graves
with stone blocks” surrounded by a low dry stone wall (with, then without, entrance corridor).
Circa 2200 before our era Ligurians adopt the use of triangular copper daggers and of bell-
shaped beakers.Horse breeding will also be introduced at that time and the portal tombs will
be replaced gradually by tombs with a stone chest under a barrow (mound).
Like all Asianic people, the Ligurians worshiped the great goddess.They also worshiped the
bull god of Mount Bego or the stag god of Val Camonica (the Celts will give the name of
“Hornunnos” to both shapes of this god).They also knew the ram-headed snake, Western
version of the horned viper venerated in the East.
- 1800: empire of the Ligurians. Colonized countries: they are found where the name of the
rivers contains the syllable ar, and where the name of the localities ends in -sk. Germany,
Switzerland, France, South England, Ireland, North and Center Italy, Corsica, South Italy and
Spain, will be colonized during the next thousand years.
On the left bank of the low valley of the Rhone, then low bell-shaped beakers decorated with
geometrical dotted patterns appear. They show perhaps the infiltration of a foreign tribe (the
Segobrige Celts???).
Then the area will be infiltrated gradually by the Celts come from North before being finally
definitively subjected by Romans.
The Ligurians will disappear then entirely. It is possible, however, that the Basques are the
descendants of one of their tribes: the Vascones.
Cultural contribution: the frame (they had wooden houses). Burials: are individual and under
the house.
Another assumption.
The ancient authors have imagined the Ligurians as a layer former to the arrival of Celts. It
resulted from that, the appearance of a mixed word of which modern success largely
exceeded ancient success. Strabo himself admitted that the meeting of the words Celts and
Ligurians had been completely built “because of the ignorance in which we were“. Very often,
in the ancient writings, the mixed words constitute a “means of solving contradictions between
two traditions resulting from different states of knowledge.” This is why the most recent
scientific writings agree on the fact that this word “Celtic-Ligurian” matches no reality.
The progress recently made by linguistics made it possible to study again a whole part of the
research on the Ligurians. We are still unaware of almost everything about a language which
would have been “Ligurian” and to which all the names we cannot link to better known
languages are ascribed. This attitude is not recent, but the corpus which results from it is
reduced considerably because of this progress of linguistics and today, many names which
were thought “Ligurian” are translated thanks to our knowledge of the Celtic language. Let us
take the example of the ethnonyms: we could think that a tribe known as “Ligurian” in the
ancient texts would have a Ligurian name inevitably, however, the majority of those ancient
authors described as “Ligurians” had in fact Celtic names. Moreover, currently, any inscription
is no longer ascribed in its entirety to a hypothetical Ligurian language. It appears increasingly
certain that the areas allegedly Ligurian in South Gaul and in North Italy, had in fact a Celt-
speaking population since the seventh century before our era. In conclusion, almost all the
113
proper nouns that specialists wanted sooner or later, to connect with Ligurian people, are
translated today by the experts in Celtic language. There exists, of course, a linguistic
substrate former to the Celtic language and perceptible in some ancient texts, but the remains
of this substrate do not match truly the corpus of names considered as Ligurians by ancient
authors. It is a substrate which we will therefore call simply pre-Celtic and which ares mainly
in the river or mountain names. These types of names are indeed most durable, in the image
of the natural elements they designate. Some researchers have been led therefore to think
that Ligurians themselves have been some Celts, who would have, on the other hand,
evolved in a way different from their neighbors, because of their specific geographical location
as well as of the contacts generated by this one. One comes from there to think consequently
that this word “Ligurian” does not reflect the real existence of a people quite distinct from the
Celts. If C. Jullian affirmed that the Celts were initially a Ligurian tribe,we could rather view
today the Ligurians as a Celtic tribe of the South.Neither the texts, nor archaeology make it
possible to support the thesis of a recent Celtic invasion which would have overwhelmed
“pure” Ligurian peoples, and moreover, these Ligurians formerly quite distinct from the other
proto-historic peoples, seem in fact strongly Celtized. There exists therefore a link between
the Celts and the southern proto-historic peoples, but this one must date back to a past more
distant than these “Celtic invasions” in which specialists believed for a long time.
114
ARYANIZATION OR INDO-EUROPEANIZATION
OF NORTHERN EUROPE.
The Finnish people of the Magelmose civilization prolonged by that of Kongemose seem to be
the initial human material of the civilization of Erteboelle (name of a Danish village).Erteboelle
is a Mesolithic civilization which developed in Denmark and the south of Sweden from -5300
to 4200.The civilization of the funnel-necked beaker is a civilization of Neolithic Europe
developing roughly from -4.200 to -2.600 in the same area of the world.
The contributions of the Mediterraneans of the megalithic civilization and of the Danubians of
the corded ware culture (some brown brachycephalic persons) contributed to making these
peoples evolve to a proto-Germanic civilization clearly individualized about 1700 to 1600
before our era.
If it is admitted, the Germanic language is well a branch of the family tree of an Indo-
European language, it is proven that it is primarily the simplified adaptation of a common
Indo-European, according to Antony Meillet, Germanized only by the displacement of the
accent and the consonant mutation. The Indo-European language thus changed by the future
Germanic people would be, according to Sigmund Feist, the Proto-Celtic language. But other
linguists think of the language of the Lusatian culture peoples.Antony Meillet places between
the fifth and the third century before our era the date of the first Germanic change which
differentiated all the Indo-European consonants except the single sibilant s, change similar to
that happened in Armenian: this “glottal idleness,” would have marked the learning of the
Aryan conquerors language by a people influenced by its original articulatory practices; and
similarly the tonic accent put on the first syllable of the main word of the sentence.
Pronunciation unfamiliar to the Indo-European language, which would have been a habit of
the peoples which “learned how to speak” the Indo-European language which will become the
Germanic one.Which shows that the reality of things, like the allegory of Aesop’s tongue, is
never as simple as the media class imagines (for example in the way it gave an account of
the war in Libya, in 2011).
115
DOGGERLAND -6500 OR ATLANTIS?
Irish myth of which we do not it was shared by the Celts of Hallstatt who were not a maritime
people (and, besides, linguistics shows that the Indo-Europeans did not know the notion of
the sea, Latin mare, Celtic mori, at the beginning a simple marsh for them).
Batar Tuathai De Danann i n-indsib tuascertachaib an domuin, aig foglaim fesa & fithnasachta
& druidechtai & amaidechtai & amainsechta combtar fortilde for suthib cerd ngenntlichtae.
Ceitri cathrachai ir-rabatar og fochlaim fhesai & eolais & diaboldanachtai. i. Falias & Goirias,
Findias & Murias. A Falias tucad an Lia Fail bui a Temraig. Nogesed fo cech rig nogebad
Erinn. A Gorias tucad an tsleg boi ac Lug. Ni gebtea cath fria no frisinti an bidh il-laimh. A
Findias tucad claidiub Nuodon. Ni terládh nech dei o dobirthe asa idntiuch bodhuha, & nor
gebtai fris. A Murias tucad coiri an Dagdai [Suqellus Gurgunt]. Ni tegedh dam dimdach uadh.
Cetri druid isna cetri cathrachaib-sin. Morfesae bai a Falias. Esras boi hi nGorias. Uiscias boi
a Findias. Semias bai a Murias. It iad sin na cetri filid ocar foglaindsit Tuata De fios & eolas.
Batar Tuathai De Danann i n-indsib tuascertachaib an domuin,
The gods of the goddess Danu (bia) were in the Islands north of the World,
aig foglaim fesa & fithnasachta & druidechtai & amaidechtai & amainsechta
learning science and magic, and druidism, and wisdom and art.
combtar fortilde for suthib cerd ngenntlichtae.
They exceeded all wise men of paganism arts.
Ceitri cathrachai ir-rabatar og fochlaim
There were four cities in which they learned
fhesai & eolais & diaboldanachtai.
science, knowledge and diabolic arts.
i. Falias & Goirias, Findias & Murias.i.e.,
Thule, Gorre, Abalum and Ogygia the green island,
A Falias tucad an Lia Fail.
It is from Thule the stone of Fal was brought.
Nogesed fo cech rig nogebad Erinn.
It roared under each king ruling over green Erin.
A Gorias tucad an tsleg boi ac Lug.
It is from Gorre the spear that Lug had, was brought
Ni gebtea cath fria no frisinti an bidh it-laimh.
No battle was won against it or against who had it in his hand.
A Findias tucad claidiub Nuodon.
It is from Abalum that the sword of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd was brought.
Ni terládh nech dei o dobirthe asa idntiuch bodhuha, & ni gebtai fris.
Nobody escaped it when it was drawn from the sleeve of Bodua.
A Murias tucad coiri an Dagdai [Suqellus Gurgunt].
It is from Ogygia the green island the cauldron of Dagda [Suqellus Gurgunt] was brought
Ni tegedh dam dimdach uadh.No company left it unsatisfied.
Cetri druid isna cetri cathrachaib-sin.
There were four druids in these four cities.
Morfesae bai a Falias.
Marovesos was in Thule.
Esras boi hi nGorias.
Esras was in Gorre.
Uiscias boi a Findias.
Uiscias lived on Abalum.
Semias bai a Murias.
Semias was in Ogygia the green island.
It iad sin na cetri filid ocar foglaindsit Tuata De fios & eolas.
They are there the four Masters of whom Tuatha Dé held their science and their knowledge.
DIODORUS OF SICILY. Book IV, chapter LVII.
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Not a few both of the ancient historians and of the later ones as well, one of whom is
Timaeus, say that the Argonauts, after the seizure of the fleece...made their course from the
north to the west, keeping the land on their left [Editor’s note. Allusion perhaps to Nemedians,
Fir Bolg, Gaileoin or others, whose memory was preserved to us by the Irish tradition]....The
writers even offer proofs of these things, pointing out that the Celts who dwell along the ocean
venerate the Dioscori above any of the gods, since they have a tradition handed down from
ancient times that these gods appeared in their country coming from the ocean [Editor’s note.
Allusion to the numerous coming and going of the Tuatha Dé Danann and other sons of the
Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, Danu (bia), mentioned by the Irish tradition?]
Moreover, the country which skirts the ocean bears, they say, not a few names which are
derived from the Argonauts and the Dioscori.”
This Greek text is probably the final echo of the pan-Celtic myths concerning Hyperborea as
well as its peopling by the god-or-demons, or the human beings, after long maritime
peregrinations (from where the connection with the Argonauts).The only mistake of Diodorus
of Sicily is to have thought that these legends applied to the areas really inhabited by the
Celts of the time. Whereas they were to be related in fact to quite a more archaic former
stage , of our mankind, that of the hyperborean times of before (of before the flood or the tidal
wave having put an end to it).One wonders well, on the other hand, who are the children of
the goddess or demoness, Danu (bia), having been able to be viewed as some Dioscuri by all
these Greek authors?Lastly, it does not matter! What is sure, on the other hand, it is this
fragment of Timaeus is without any doubt its chronological continuation.
Drasidae (sic) memorant re vera fuisse populi partem indigenam, sed alios quoque ab
insulis extimis confluxisse et tractibus transrenanis, crebritate bellorum et adluvione fervidi
maris sedibus suis expulsos” (Timagenes, quoted by Ammianus Marcellinus, book XV,
chapter IX, paragraph 4).
The druids affirm that a portion of the people was really indigenous to the soil, but that other
inhabitants poured in from very remote islands on the coast, and from the districts across the
Rhine, having been driven from their former abodes by frequent wars, and sometimes by
inroads of a tempestuous sea.”Notes in connection with the expression, “insulis extimis…
and… adluvione fervidi maris,“ that Timagenes, quoted by Ammianus Marcellinus, uses (book
XV, chapter IX, paragraph 4).
Between 1.650 and 1200, our planet was affected by strong seismic disturbances
accompanied by an active volcanism with concomitant tidal waves. In spite of that, the
climatic optimum being kept, it seems that there was, all things considered, a “olden age”
which did not last. It occurred heat such as the thawing of the Arctic ices made the sea-level
rise, of which that of the North Sea.In - 1250, it is the disaster. The North Sea breaks the
dune sandbar of which the islands of Friesland mark out the former front, in the north of
Lower Saxony and the west of Schleswig-Holstein or Jutland. The lowlands are overrun by
the sea, from a tidal wave to a tidal wave. A terrible flood therefore (confirmed by
archaeology, and of which Celtic traditions, just like “Germanic” Edda, have memory) causing
panic and chain reactions provoked by the headlong migration of the surviving
inhabitants.These migratory exodus after-effects of this disaster caused the movement of the
“Sea People” which made waves to the Maghreb (origin of the famous fair-haired
Berbers).Thirty years later, whereas these movements continued, a volcanic explosion made
the Aegean island of Thera (Santorin), shattered, towards 1.220.The Mediterraneans
themselves shaken, moved in turn, amplifying thus the migration of the Sea People. Indo-
Europeans and non-Indo-European mixed poured into Egypt, which had the reputation to be a
land of Cockaigne at that time. Hence also a little more in the North-East, the famous
Philistines.
! -------------- ----------------------- --------------------!
The conclusion of their long conflict with Egyptians was their settlement in the coastal strip
located in the south-west of future Palestine, from Gaza to Tel Aviv, in the12th century before
our era. Their five cities (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath) ruled the area until the
Assyrian conquest of Tiglath-Pileser III in -732. They spoke perhaps an Indo-European
language (the name being used to designate their rulers, seren, was compared by some
linguists with Greek tyrannos); but their two principal gods, however, Baal-Zebub and Dagon,
are Canaanite (they were not in the least racist!).
117
Baal-Zebub, the ruler of flies (sic)!One cannot understand the true meaning of his name
thanks to the Bible but thanks to the numerous texts of Ugarit. It was in reality Baal Zebul,
“Baal-Prince.” The Hebrew scribes wrote zebub instead of zebul to make fun of him (hello
religious tolerance and god of love)! Strangely, people still remind of him at the time of the
Nazarene high Rabbi Jesus, but under his original true name: Baal-Zebul (become the prince
of the demons in Gospels). Jews have always had great difficulty not to honor, at the same
time as their own god, this great Canaanite deity of fertility even of health. After his fall from
the balcony of his palace (2 K 1, 2-16), the king of Israel, Ahaziah (circa - 853) went to consult
him about his chances of healing.
Dagon. This name matches obviously that of Dagan, the god of corn, very often mentioned in
the texts of Mari. The Philistines therefore adopted a local god, protector of corn, a so
important food product for the survival of men and animals; only the pronunciation of his
name undergoes a light change. He was perhaps represented in the appearance of a man
holding an ear or a sheaf of wheat with his hand in his temple of Ashdod.
!----------- ------------------- ----------------------- ----!
Circa - 1200, end of the drought period, and return to a rather fresh temperate climate. Then
the last time of the “Lusatian” Bronze Age” begins, moving on to that of the “Middle Bronze “.
For most of Northern Europe, it will be a kind of restarting from scratch after the climatic
disaster.We may consider that the ethnic groups, fathers of the future groups Thracian-
Illyrian, Celtic, Italic, Germanic, are already differentiated; although their languages are still
close to the old European pools resulting from proto-Indo-European.
118
PRELIMINARY DEBATE.
It is true that I am not an authentic French according to the current ideology on the subject
today in this poor country: to be a true French it is to be (with the right placing) a republic,
only that alone, a host country (what pretentiousness!) equality (what an abstraction) social
justice (what hypocrisy,what taqiyya!) and so on ... but my ancestors nevertheless were so,
unquestionably, in 1635 (in Attancourt, in Champagne), and for this reason although being not
a true French I will take the liberty to say (to true Frenchmen) what I think of all this; I who is
neither a republic nor a host country of my own, etc. but only a human being quite simply, not
a saint or an angel (normal really, male, more than 50 years old, post-office employee,
divorcee, three children, and so on).A pitiful and utterly predictable (one can see coming a
mile off its various speakers in their big clogs) debate, rages currently in France in connection
with the idea of national identity. Below analysis of the concept of national history and of what
is at stakes by the French web site Rue 89. For the criticism of this shower of paralogisms
which follow one another in the same way see the true French of branch (very good but also
very honest, therefore satisfactory for the mind, image, to say adopted French) Éric Zemmour
and Alain Finkielkraut; who have dismantled these basic paralogisms (or sophisms?)
This history… is today obsolete in order to decipher a French identity with numerous
postcolonial and world roots. On the other hand, and it is most serious, the idea of a Gallic
stock ethnicizes fantastically the “true” nation and denies the racial and cultural diversity
which has always accompanied the historical creation of France. The kingdom at its
beginning in the 13th century juxtaposes some countries with different speeches and habits.
The West Indies of the supporters of slavery in the 17th century add a new section to this
history.This reading works out spatially the past around Hexagon only, excluding from this
past all that is geographically external to it, like the West Indies or even Corsica. It gives to
the length of the presence on the supposed “Gallic” hexagonal territory a almost magic virtue
in the name of a genealogical precedence which would be synonymous with superiority…"
Editor’s note: Wow! To be more concrete even more down-to-earth and to begin with Hugh
Capet 987: as regards the languages in north the Flemish or Dutch, in south the Catalan and
the Basque (Lapurdi), between the two the Oillitainia (oil language, ancestor of the French
language) and Occitania (language of oc). The linguistic limits between these two great units
will hardly vary thereafter besides, apart from the Middle-West (Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis,
Angoumois) after the Hundred Years War (gradual disappearance of the language of oc in
favor of the language of oil, the future French). The birth certificate of the French language is
generally regarded as being the oath of Strasbourg in 842 but as some authors see there a
more or less skillful translation of a text initially written in Germanic language, we will mention
here the sequence or the cantilena of saint Eulalia circa 880: “Buona pulcella fut Eulalia” …
down to “et à lui nos laist venir par souue clementia.”
But the reality is here (still according to Rue 89).
Mixed peoples and various languages: no “Gallic” horizon.These centuries have witnessed, in
Western Europe, a mixing, an interbreeding of peoples, and a very slow change of dialects. In
this mosaic of peasantries with difficult communications, languages abound, Latin remaining
that of writing, of manuscripts, of clerks and of chancelleries. Great linguistic units frame this
diversity. In the south, the languages of oc are strongly marked by Latin, except the strange
Basque enclave on the two sides of the (Atlantic) Pyrenees. Between the rivers Loire and
Meuse, the languages of oil, a mixing of Frank, Celtic, dialects and of debased Latin, show
many varieties. In north and east, the languages remain Germanic, while in Armorica the
Breton immigrants from (Great) Britain in the fourth and fifth centuries had (again) Celtized
dialects….
Editor’s note. But the famous Loth line evokes more the gradual disappearance of a Celtic
language in the 10th century (but which one?) than that of a maximal advance.In short, for
Rue 89 same situation as before with in addition Germanic languages in Alsace and Lorraine,
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the Breton in the most Western part of Armorica. The situation thus described matches
nevertheless a kingdom of France already well increased. N.B. To all these languages, it is
also important to add the dialect known as Franco-Provençal (Center-East of France and
French Switzerland with the exception of Jura) and we shall have there a linguistic picture
nearly complete (Corsican is missing) but matching the kingdom of France already well
increased thanks to the conquests or to the marriages.
According to their conquest, the Romans distinguish Gallia cisalpina in Italy and Gallia
transalpina on the other side of the Alps. When Caesar, in the middle of the first century
before our era, reached the Rhine, he decrees that the river is the border between Gallia and
Germania. Purely geographical space, this Gaul is a territory parceled out among many
people and Caesar himself speaks about war of GAULS (with plural for Gaul). Until the fall of
the Western Roman Empire, Gaul is a geographical fiction. In the fourth century, no
administrative entity of the Empire has this name.
Editor’s note. Who wants to prove too much proves nothing. All covet, all lose. It is quite true
that there were also Celtic or Celtized people on the other side of the Rhine and that it is the
Romanization which had in reality truly separated all these European peoples. Those of the
left bank of the Rhine and those of the right Bank. On the other hand, there were several of
Gallic empire attempts. Because the five centuries of Roman peace were in reality five
centuries of revolts against the Roman colonialism (or against the shameless exploitation by
Rome of the territory, what comes to the same thing).
-The first Gallic empire (an oath pro imperio galliarum was taken) will be that of Classicus,
Tutor, Civilis, and Sabinus (the husband of the famous Eponine) in 70.
-The second Gallic empire was that of Postumus from 257 to 267. Tetricus will succeed
Postumus from 268 to 273. Then Probus from 273 to 282. After, this second Gallic empire
will sink in anarchy. There will be dissident Gallic emperors (Proculus, Bonosus) and even
some emperors of bagaudae: a person by the name of Laelianus in 283 and a certain
Amandus (Salvius Amandus) in 286.
-The third Gallic empire was that of Carausius from 287 to his death occurred in 293. There
again a long period of anarchy will follow .-The fourth Gallic empire will be that of Constantine
in 407. Called later Constantine the usurper to distinguish him from Constantine the Great
and from the poor Constantine II. As soon as he had entered Arles, he announced to
Ravenna (the new capital of the Western Empire) that Gaul from now on would send no
longer one man, would deliver no longer nor even would sell no longer, horses or supply,
whatever it is; and that duties and taxes would from now on would go to the Empire of Gauls.
-The fifth empire of Gauls. In the beginning of the fifth century, another Maximus will emerge
who will be called the tyrant in order to distinguish him from the other Maximus. Assassinated
in 422. He will have been, but during a time only, holder of the title of emperor of Gauls.
- The last Gallic emperor will be the bagaude revolutionist Tibatto in 436.
For more details to refer to the fascinating book by Maurice Bouvier (no, no, no, has nothing
to do with Jackie Kennedy’s family except the name) Ajam; on the subject (a specialist in
economic and social history of Antiquity).End of the editor’s note. Return to the text by Rue
89.
From the great migrations of peoples come from east and north, which contributed to the
disappearance of the Roman Empire, give rise to new configurations with drifting limits, the
kingdoms known as “Romano-barbarians.” Let us quote for example the Burgondia (future
Burgundy), the Aquitaine of the Visigoths, the Alemania, the Austrasia… At the beginning of
the sixth century, the Franks - one of these peoples come from east - manage, thanks to the
military successes of Clovis, a small king of Tournai (future Belgium) supported by the
Church, to impose their domination on the majority of the other kingdoms…and on the last
part of the Western Roman Empire, the territory between Loire and Somme directed by the
son of the general Aegidius (or of the patrician Aetius?) capital Soissons (Syagrius is
defeated here and obliged to abandon it to Clovis in 486). A guarantee of the unity and
national indivisibility for the founders of the Republic.In the 18th century, the debates around
the “Gauls” change while becoming more or less ideological. Ancestors of common people,
they oppose the “Franks” who are the ancestors of aristocrats.Revolution therefore witnesses
the triumph of “Gauls”… The character Vercingetorix [a kind of continental Boudicca] is then
imagined, from an ambiguous sentence of Caesar, as the first of our heroes (unknown before
the 19th century). He enters the history handbooks of the Second Empire then of the [French]
Republic.”
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Therefore let us conclude and following Rue 89 but very prudently, that the Celtic linguistic
and cultural substrate, although deprived of any political, and even racial unity in a strict
sense of the word we can add....(There does not exist French race: see our booklet in two
volumes published in 1985 volume 1 - and 1991 - volume 2 - entitled “the truth on the
races,” and that entitled “the right to origins” published in 1987-1988 by the Real Brittany
Editions of my old friend Jack Quatreboeufs)…has formerly and until the 19th century played
a great part in the formation of the French nation, which is in its beginning a territorial whole
globally Romano-Gallic (Catalan, Occitan, Oillitain, Franco-Provencal or Arpitan) spiced with
various elements, a little like some salt, even appreciably increased in its periphery…
With non-Aryan elements like the Basques. The unusual “enclave” of Rue 89. Also called
Euzkady.With Corsican Islanders. Rue 89 is right not to forget it.With many Germanic
elements in Alsace and Lorraine Franconian (Thionville Bitche and Phalsbourg, North-East of
France).With other Germanic elements in Flanders. Cf. North and East according to Rue
89.Without forgetting the case really separate that the peopling of Armorican Brittany forms,
which has been also the source of a controversy which brings disgrace to the French
intellectuals (shame on them!) or at , which does not honor their intelligence: KLT breton,
Vannetese breton, Gallo.
What to say more of what is preceding? At least if we understand well, this opinion column of
the web site Rue 89. Moliere’s language is not a very easy language, I notice it every day with
my French-speaking pen-friends (it is often difficult to understand each other), and I am only a
grandson of the she-cooker of the manor; even if the latter also sheltered Voltaire during
some time. Therefore I concede to them without a problem that I control much less than them
in Paris, French language.There is, however, a point on which this opinion column used
exactly the words which it is necessary: the Breton language. “In Armorica, the Breton
immigrants from (Great) Britain in the fourth and fifth centuries have (again) Celtized the
dialects…”.And this notwithstanding the other pitiful typically Franco-French debate, i.e., of a
deep vacuity, stating the obvious, but bringing nothing, which also rages on the web in this
field. There too, the arguments of one or others are utterly predictable (you can see them
coming a mile off in their big clogs).The debate is distorted by anti-national-Breton-neo-druidic
(or on the contrary national-Breton-neo-druidic besides) unsaid things, which poison any
species of unbiased reflection.We remain in the pure ideology! To affirm that the Brittonic
language has nothing to do with the Gaulish helps at the same time French men to prove that
Breton is a language of invaders come from Great Britain in order to cause chaos in an area
where everyone spoke Latin (sic) and the Bretons to maintain that they have nothing in
common with French men.Some specifications therefore!The Bretons in question are the
Romano-British people, reinforced with few other Christianized Celts from Ireland and from
Scotland. The Breton principality, in the political meaning of the word, at the beginning
included neither the county of Nantes, neither that of Rennes, neither that of Vannes, nor the
territory of the Curiosolites (area of Corseul).The truth finally is that there were only tiny
dialectal variant between the continental Celtic language and the islander Celtic. Similar those
being able to exist between English of the USA and English of the United Kingdom, English of
the Queen in a way really [or between French of Paris and French of Canada of
course].When the Bretons arrived in Armorica, which was not a desert, they found there some
rural populations speaking the same language as them. The fact!Circa 460, Sidonius
Apollinaris says that the Arverne nobility of his time just began to speak Latin. At one time
when the Roman Empire was dying!In 565, Venantius Fortunatus, who visits only court
people, is explained by them the meaning of the Celtic place names. These nobles, while
speaking Latin, of course, therefore understood still the indigenous language. What to say
then of the folk?
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PRELIMINARY DEBATE CONTINUATION.
The name “Celts” appears first in Hecataeusof Miletus (around 500 before our era) then in
Herodotus (circa 450 before our era). In the Greek form “Keltoï.” This word would come from
the Indo-European “keletos,” fast or “kel-kol,” inhabitant, colonist. The word “Galatian”
appears in Greek literature in 279 before our era.
Galatia” is the name of the province of Asia Minor where the Celts founded a kingdom.In old
Greek, Gaul is called Gallia. And besides this name designates still France (in modern
Greek).
Galli” appears for the first time in - 168 in the “Origins” of Cato the Elder (as a Latin
translation of “Galatians“).The terms Gauls and Celts are at the beginning synonyms. Then
the Romans will keep the first term for a part of the Celts. Those who were settled in Cisalpine
Gaul (North Italy) and Transalpine Gaul (beyond the Alps seen from Italy, i.e. roughly France
today).In the second century, Cassius Dio will translate Gauls by Galatians and Celts by
Germanic (what, of course, is an extension of the word, the Germanic ones being then
involved in a Celtization process).Caesar was already aware of the conventional
characteristic of these distinctions. We call Gauls [in our language] “those who in their own
language are called Celts.” Today, specialists keep the word “Gauls” for the inhabitants of
Gaul from the third century before our era. For the previous periods and the other
geographical areas, they speak about “Celts.” Conclusion: as we have already mentioned,
Romanization has separated Celts from their cousins… Germanic.Let us finally point out to
our French pen-friends or counterparts more than patriotic not to say of ultra-right-wing that
this etymology has nothing to do with the name of cock (gallus). It is only a bad play on words
made by… Romans. The true national emblem of Gauls was at the time the lark (or in a
pinch, the wild pig or boar). The whole without sexual connotations as in Dominique Strauss-
Kahn’s case. See below 2)!
Poor country poor people! These Frenchmen of ultra-right-wing are those who signed
themselves the death and the erasure of their people, which was formerly a great nation
(Lafayette, Napoleon); by sending to power in 2007, with 53% of the votes, a low and vulgar
man who is very much in their image, called Nicholas, Paul, Stephen, Sarközy of Nagy-
Bocsa. However, France is a nation which committed suicide elsewhere during the 20th
century, and that we can regard today as belonging to the past.
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NOTES.
1) The political class and the intellectuals in this country now show a staggering mediocrity,
conformism or incredible servility towards the ideas in vogue. Those which are prevailing or
those which belong (in a way), to Her Majesty’s opposition… our English friends would say.
The official opposition of the right-thinking people.
Official philosophers, journalists or other persons in charge of mass media (what is terrifying
in the expression mass media, it is the word “mass ); rabbis, bishops or pastors,
writers...support by obscuring, censoring, denigrating, or ridiculing, all the contrary or simply
different ideas; the few prevailing ideas below.
The best way of building Europe, it is to base it on the highest common factor which can exist
among the men, economy, therefore selfishness. Especially not on a great idea or on a great
ideal like at the time of the 1776 or 1789 revolution. Result: the European Union is still only a
Common Market without soul.
Russia is not European! Has nothing to do with Europe. It is systematically necessary to be
hostile towards it, and to be wary about it, and especially not to live in peace or harmoniously
with it. See the staggering unknowing (bordering on the voluntary blindness?) or the bad faith,
of the covering by the media of the chess game having opposed Georgia and Russia in 2008.
Absolutely incredible! Absolutely incredible! As regards myself I saw the head Nicholas
Sarkozy leaving the negotiation, how can they speak about success in what concerns him at
that time?? He looked like somebody who has just swallowed an affront. And the press
conference which followed highlighted it very well (it had to be arranged for that by Russians
besides).
Turkey, too, on the other hand, is European, and it is therefore absolutely necessary that it is
as soon as possible integrated in the European Union. Like Israel and Morocco. In short like
any country of the planet satisfying necessarily the required social political criteria.
Everyone must be Muslim, or pro-Muslim, or at the very least neutral in what concerns Islam.
And especially not to call a spade, a spade, when it is a question of this religious alienation
imprisoning two billion our human brothers. When facts do not go really clearly in this
direction, quickly to slip into the debate the assertion completely theoretical or very
questionable, that the thing has nothing to do with Islam, the true one, according to such or
such (self-proclaimed or practicing taqiyya) authority on the subject… that according to one
such or one such Islam it is not that!Argument: Islam is an admirable natural religion, and only
are to be condemned certain extremists who distort its original message. Which is too,
admirable through its peace, gentleness, tolerance and freedom (see the saint Quran)…
By contrast, atheists agnostics or non-followers of the religions of the Book (but of 12 like the
Fenians) are human beings bringing anything to mankind, to humanism, to philosophy, or to
ethics, and without whom consequently we could do very well; when they are not purely and
simply harmful elements to be forgotten, censored or eliminated by the courts. This kind of
individual is called Islamophobe and Islamophobia, “ it is not good!” President said).
N.B. So here we are! Islam belongs to the many taboos of journalism or of French media, as
well as immigration, national identity, total free trade with China, climate change,ineluctable
degrowth awaiting us, and so on (the list of these taboos is long in France).
The best way for Europe to preserve its identity like its soul or its spirit is not to adopt a
neutral international language as communication language or for the European laws (for
example Esperanto), but to adopt the Globish English as the official language.
France, it is freedom, equality, brotherhood, human rights, welcome, immigration… and
anything else. France, it is especially not William the Conqueror, the romances of the Round
Table, Joan of Arc, Versailles, champagne and Lafayette.France, the true one, begins only in
1789. Before this date they are not true French men. They are French people of the second-
class, unworthy of interest or (positive) comments and all in all degenerated blood relations
people; having been able to survive only thanks to interbreeding with races without whom
they could not do and continue to exist (mentality of breeders of cattle of dogs or horses,
crossing their animals). This French bashing and this France bashing, anti-French racism, do
not develop only in America, it has also developed exponentially for 50 years in France itself!
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And everyone is beautiful is nice and smart, with only a few exceptions! Those who are in no
way papist, nor idolizing Muhammad (isma), if not Moses, the immigrants from the fiftieth or
hundredth generation, those who are against unlimited financial capitalism, and your servant,
etc.
Are not true French also, therefore, the men and the women, the soldiers and the farmers, or
craftsmen, and the sailors, who by their humble daily work, made this country living (as well
as a good part of North America from Quebec to Louisiana via Acadia) and its culture. Oh the
“Cajun” songs and New Orleans….
The original culture of these men or women (cooking, sea shanties, popular songs, bonfires
lighted on Midsummer Night, etc.) has no interest. It is necessary it is,as soon as possible,
replaced by the culture of the other people (one calls that a cultural enrichment. As that of the
unfortunate Indians who were so much culturally enriched that they almost disappeared
forever. Who remembers that the site of New York discovered in 1524 by a French expedition
led by Verrazane - who named it "New Angouleme" - was first "Indian")?The territory of what
was going to become New York and particularly Manhattan island was occupied at the
beginning of the 17th century by Indians Lenni Lenape, improperly called wolves by the
French Canadians: a fraction of the Algonquin nation. Lenni-Lenape means “true men” in
Algonquin language.Lenape were divided into three subgroups: Minsi (totem wolf), Unami
(totem tortoise) and Unalachtigos (totem turkey). Lenape were regarded as the
“grandfathers,” the founding people from whom all Algonquins resulted.Lenni-Lenape are
perfectly representative of the Indians in North America whom Europeans knew in 17th and
18th centuries (see the Mohicans of Fennimore Cooper). Along the rivers, they built large
villages surrounded by collective fields where women cultivated corn, bean, marrow and
tobacco. They lived in dome-shaped wigwams, made up of branches covered with bark. A
large common house was in the center of the village. The collective or ceremonial dwellings
were rectangular, similar to the Iroquois or Huron “long houses.” A strong wooden palisade
coupled with a ditch behind which could be hidden warriors discouraged the possible
attackers.Each village was controlled by a chief chosen for his wisdom and assisted by a
council of elders (our modern allegedly democratic States could draw their inspiration from
that). The filiation was matrilineal. It is among the Lenni-Lenape that the White people saw for
the first time the ceremonial pipes which were used to establish relations of exchange and
friendship between men.
It is at the beginning of the year 1620 that the Lenni-Lenape and the associated tribes will
make contact with the White people.
The clan occupying Manhattan was that of Manhatta. The island was bought in 1626 by the
French Huguenot Pierre Minuit, governor of New Belgium. For 26 dollars the (perhaps
exaggerated) legend says.
William Penn will be one of the rare White people to treat natives with respect and to keep his
word. In 1738, settlers use of a stratagem to force the Lenni-Lenape to give up their good
arable lands and to withdraw more in the west in the Ohio Valley. In July 1755, they take part
in the battle of the Monongahela River close to Fort Duquesne where, beside the French, the
Shawnees, the Ottawas, the Chippewas, the Abenakis, the Hurons and the Senecas, they
inflict the English a heavy defeat (Braddock’s expedition: 30 dead on the French side, 450 on
the English side, but fortunately, or unfortunately for the English, George Washington will
come through).
In short, these Indians were so culturally enriched that they are called today Delaware (from
George De La Ware, first governor of Virginia) are only 2000 and have no longer something
at their disposal but one little territory which was guaranteed to them by the federal state, in
Oklahoma (two tribes).
Some Lenni-Lenape nevertheless could remain in the North-East. They have, under the name
of Munsees, a preserve in Wisconsin which they share with the Stockbridges and one in the
Canadian province of Ontario that they occupy under the name of Moravians.
20 000 souls in 1600. 4000 in 1700. 16.000 in 2000.
Another element of the dominant French ideology today. To speak no longer about French
identity but about Republican identity (as if the United States or the China too were not some
republics, there are even Islamic Republics, so? ? ? ? !)
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To repeat in loops and ad infinitum information as what a police woman named Fayda Hamdi
would have slapped a young unemployed graduate called Mohammad Bouazizi, in Sidi
Bouzid (Tunisia), on December 17, 2010. As what the young blogger Amina Arraf, a gay girl
of the opposition was assassinated on June 5th (2011) in Syria. etc.
Historical truth seldom goes out from the mouth of the statesmen. Claudius in 48 lied, in
front of an audience [the Roman Senate] completely agreeing to accept his lies” (Maurice
Bouvier. The emperors). Thanks to this new French ideology, vocabulary of mankind was
even enriched by new concepts of the greatest interest. One makes no longer war (in Libya
or elsewhere); one intervenes no longer in favor of a faction against another, “one makes
pressure in order to protect civilians.” Now will you tell me, why drop bombs (humanitarian
bombs of course) on Tripoli and Sirte (a town completely destroyed by NATO) and not on
Damascus in order to protect the disarmed Syrian civilians? Because Gaddafi too, stronger
than Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction; thanks to the boatloads of
Viagra that he receives (and the embargo so ?) has weapons of mass rape of his
opponents.As regards the civil war in Libya besides,viewed by the journalists: to always
mention the losses of the insurrectionists, never those of the loyalist armed forces; to never
speak about the massacre of certain (loyalist) prisoners, to underline well for those who are
not Libyan citizens (there were some of them) that they are soldiers paid by the government
to make war, always to make people think they were well treated (casualties treated) etc.
We live a formidable time! The war fought in Libya in 2011 by the French president of the
time will have really been a war made for a lark’s nest like that of Arderryd in the sixth century
(Merlin could have said ... But make no mistake about it! I am not for as much Gaddafi's fan! I
will find for example completely normal that the Berber language and culture in Nefusa Jebel
(from Nalut to Ghadames) also become official in Libya, and even that they have their flag
and their national anthem (cultural autonomy in the frame of a federal state).
This ideology, because it is well an ideology, and in any way a thoroughly philosophical
reflection, but some taboos; became so dominant that it looks now to be only a series of
obviousness of common sense. Which are not debatable ( they know only one end of Aesop’s
tongue indeed!) The French intellectual it is the one who discovers a heavy trend 30 or 40
years after its rise, and 10 or 15 years after the ordinary citizens. When the wise man points
at the moon with his finger, the French intellectual… looks at the finger. With all due respect
to our French pen-friends, the French culture today is no longer one of the first cultures in the
world, but a minor regional culture, coexisting on its own territory with various foreign cultures.
What intellectuals who control our awareness name necessarily some interbreeding, since
everything must be known as mixed today (principle of the obligatory interbreeding); whereas
it is generally only a juxtaposition or a mosaic of differences. And that the true interbreeding
too (just like migratory movements), had always existed, without being stupidly and
unnecessarily claimed at this point. For example, the Pullani resulting from the crusades in
the 12th century. See on this subject the movie of Ridley Scott released in 2005 in spite of its
ideological anachronisms with regard to the frame of mind of the time and its subtle anti-
French Templars bashing (but if Raynald of Chatillon in 1182 had been able to take Mecca
the face of the world would have been changed!) The phenomenon even existed between
Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, between Neanderthal and Denisova man!
As the person by the name Bardamu says very well while speaking on the web site of Rue 89
on the 6/23/2008 at 18:33 (because everyone didn’t agree to the contents of this opinion
column).No, it is true? Then Pharamond didn't exist for real? As I am disappointed…
Seriously, apart from stating the obvious, which is the interest of this article? The origins of all
the peoples are mythical, the great “founding stories” too… And until the 19th century, and
then to the great bleeding of the First World War, immigration does not play any part in
French demography or almost.I know well that the fashion is to “non-existentialism,” and that
it is good form to contest there is even something which resembles a “French identity” (boo
the nasty word!) but to summon these poor Celtic ones for the needs of the absence of a
demonstration, in the name of a cheap rubbish cosmopolitanism, appears to me
meaningless…Another paralogism or sophism typical of intellectuals or journalists today: we
can no longer reasonably speak of Gauls or Romans or Franks, because too many changes
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have occurred since then but the French will always be the French regardless of the changes
that will occur.Common sense requires us to admit that in terms of evolution, from a certain
level of change, an ethnonym, a gentile, loses all relevance, and that continuing to use it is
more misleading than any other thing and a new name is needed (Australopithecus,
Neanderthal, modern man, etc.)
The truth is that we all are biologically and/or culturally mixed immigrants! But now that we
have said that, in what are we more gotten ahead? Did we make progress, would it be only of
an inch, the solution or the appeasement of the tensions which currently torment our Mankind
(ecological disasters, climatic upheaval, exhaustion of the natural resources, religious
obscurantism and totalitarianism, status of women, social inequalities, hunger in the world,
wars, freedoms, leisure, culture, degrowth…) ???
As for me if I were a true French, a French 200% like those today, it is not at all that I would
view the things; but fortunately, I am not a true French in the meaning of the word become
usual. Specialists had sufficiently made me understand that for decades and decades, by all
possible means (speeches, books, television programs, comments of media men, etc.).
Thanks God, America can thus sleep quiet with such “Intellectuals” or such “Europeans” (the
quotation marks are necessary). And long life to the first amendment of the Constitution (in
America: the one guaranteeing most total freedom of expression)!
2) The US media too were right (and particularly at the time of the rape affair having involved
the French managing director of the International Monetary Fund in 2011 (D. Strauss-Kahn)
to highlight the incredible servility of the French journalists with regard to their politickers
(apart from those of the National Front of course). A law of silence (omerta) accompanied by
unworthy (male chauvinist, odious) remarks wanting to see only an agreed, sexual affair,
where there was obviously rape (all the difference it is the consent) committed over a poor girl
by a “big white” a man who thought you can do what you want when you are a member of the
rulers of the world.Defenders of Strauss-Kahn (of whom the “eminent” Bernard-Henri Levy,
the famous author of the “French ideology,” one more) don’t appear to be refined humanists,
but members of a clique of narcissistic important person endowed with an immoderate feeling
of what is owed to them (Newsweek. From memory. In any case it was the idea).Michelle
Holdberg also protests against criticisms from Bernard-Henri Levy. If a criminal justice refuses
indeed to grant a preferential treatment to a foreign rich and powerful international official
accused of sexual assault on a cleaning lady, credit must be given it for that.
The rest of the French intelligentsia is not spared by this little revolt. In a general way, for
David Rieff of The New Republic, from Bernard-Henri Levy to Jean Daniel the editorial writer
of the Nouvel Observateur, through the eminent human rights lawyer Robert Badinter, while
considering that Dominique Strauss-Kahn himself is the true victim of this drama, the French
intellectuals went too far (from memory. However it was well the idea).In short, France is not,
what a shame on it, come out of this psychodrama with increased stature! Because the
presumption of innocence is, of course, an important benefit of our States... subject to the
rule of law , but that should not result in disregarding the situation or the feeling of the (also
presumed) victim, even and especially if it is only a chambermaid.
We must in no way equate a rape with private life, in order to beg for the rapes legitimate
respect due to the private life between consenting adults. As if the fact of entering non-agreed
sexual intercourse was normal since it is done in private!
Noblesse (true nobility) obliges! But all these French make France ashamed. ….It is badly
viewed now to have precise ideas on what should be an ideal society, and even simply in
order to reform thoroughly society, in short the beginning of a common, program (of left or
right wings), and the majority of our politickers want to be especially pragmatic. Then in this
case the legitimate protection of private life should not be used as an excuse for concealing
whole pieces of the personality of the women or men who aspire to rule the country. We have
even only that, now,to choose.What is reproached this great French socialist (therefore in
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theory a bleeding heart defender of the weak and of the oppressed) who lived as a billionaire,
it is to have had, how to say, a not very chivalrous behavior towards a young widow (her
husband, son of a Fulani marabout, died shortly after their marriage) who worked hard to
bring up her daughter.The servility of the French media towards the (political) power is also
attested by their attitude, completely approving, completely biased, without any objectivity,
and even without any intelligence, just like that of politickers in the Strauss-Kahn case
besides (in fact some propaganda, not journalism, but it is true that journalists did worse at
the time of the last war against Iraq, with the story of mass destruction weapons. Without
forgetting the other taboos of the French society in the media: Islam (you can only be for it)
immigration (you can only be for it) Europe (you can only be in favor) complete free trade with
China (one can only be for it) etc.,etc. The list of these taboos of the French journalism today
is long as we could see. But let us return to our sheep (not journalists or media but
politickers)!!
It is necessary to say that the French Socialists of the time were quite a curious left wing; a
caviar and champagne left wing, Dominique Strauss-Kahn style, of which think-tanks advised
ignoring workmen or employees (cf. the report of the association Terra Nova). Are missing
only farmers and breeders! The positions of Henri De Man in 1940 (according to Zeev
Sternhell) in a way. Difficult to be more in contradiction with one' ethics or to betray at this
point one's great ancestors.From Bernard-Henri Levy I expected anything indeed, but the one
who really disappointed me in the circumstance was Jean-François Kahn, the founder of the
weekly magazine Marianne (he dared to call this rape, “tumbling a chambermaid!”)For the
record my mother was only the daughter of the manor she-cooker! I therefore consider that all
these French journalists, by their cast solidarity, really harmed the image of France abroad,
because anti-French racism played to its heart's content in this case: frog legs it, was for
example the New York Post headline on May 21st! Thank you for this new surge of anti-
French racism * Mr. Strauss-Kahn!
The fact that journalists and media today are an obstacle between the always complex and
not dualistic besides, reality of the world (like Aesop’s tongue), and the citizens; make ( or
interact like a distorting prism therefore ) this reality of the world difficult to understand for the
ordinary citizens (while selecting and manipulating or commenting in a biased way,
information, sneakily, well warm seated in their armchairs) explains the dramatic delays in the
necessary awakening of our mankind, with respect to the great challenges of the future:
climate change, pollution, exhaustion of natural resources, impossibility of an infinite growth in
the finite world which is ours, multiculturalism which turns in zero-culturalism, therefore
disappearance of what makes the richness of mankind : biodiversity of languages and
cultures, etc., etc.
* The expressions used in this case were “French bashing” and “France bashing.” But let us
return to our spiritual ancestors, the Celts, subject more interesting than France today in so
far as we can still use this term, with all due respect to our Parisian friends and
correspondents.
Note of the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau: end of the preliminary debate about the intellectuals in
this country.
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ETHNOGENESIS OF CELTS.
The oldest sources mention the Celts as living in the areas of Europe which stretch from the
Pillars of Hercules to the Danube, in the middle of the fifth century before our era. i.e., with a
slight difference Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, North of Italy, Germany and Austria.
However, and these carefully phrased remarks having been taken, it goes without saying it is
not because the word appears in the fifth century before our era, that the thing (the people in
question) did exist before. The Celts existed before the appearance of the term “Keltoi” in the
Greek literature of the fifth century, that is certain.
As the great archaeologist Venceslas Kruta in a Spanish study points out very precisely and
extremely prudently … We can affirm today, without too many risks to be mistaken, that the
formation of Celtic Europe was a process having begun well before the sixth century before
our era; and that at least a part of the anonymous civilizations of the end of the Bronze Age,
as well as of the beginning of the Iron Age in Central and Western Europe, was to belong to
Celtic-speaking peoples (Venceslas Kruta. Revista de Guimarães, Volume Especial I,
Guimarães, 1999, p. 51 - 85).
Concerning their origin, two extreme explanations are possible, without historical or
archeological data making it possible to choose.The theory implying that the Celts would be
the indigenous population of Western Europe. The theory of migrations. Of course, the
combination or the partial juxtaposition of these two explanations is also possible.
The theory of the Celts natives of Western Europe. A civilization strictly speaking “Celtic”
would have slowly developed by cultural diffusion within a former prehistoric settlement: in
this case, no important ethnic upheaval would have accompanied the “rise” of the Celts. Then
remain to explain the Basque substrate in Euzkady and the non-Aryan substrate of the
Germanic languages (the special place of the Germanic languages in the large linguistic
family formed by the Indo-European languages which makes rather think of an Indo-
Europeanization of pre-Aryan peoples than about another thing).
Theory of the migrations. A wave of a pre-Celtic or Celtic peopling of Europe would have
taken place, being superimposed on one or more peopling having preceded. The difficulty
which arises then is of knowing when and from what center of peopling these migrations
would have occurred.The theory of the migrations is based on the common characteristics of
the language and of the beliefs of the “Indo-European” family. But certain archeological data
in the Danubian areas question the thesis of these migrations which did not leave trace. The
theory of the migrations also has difficulty to explain the early presence, in the west, of Celtic
people like Celtiberians.
Reminders.Colin Renfrew thinks that there was well, in fact, an Indo-European cradle, but it
would have been located in the east of Turkey, in the Neolithic era, in the ninth thousand
years before our era. In contact with the Fertile Crescent and the invention of agriculture, this
cradle would have developed then extended, slowly and gradually.Around - 7.000 these
peoples would have reached Europe by assimilating or moving towards the west the non-
Indo-European peoples still hunter-gatherers. On this assumption, the extension of the Indo-
European languages would thus follow exactly that of husbandry: 6.000 years before our era
in the Mediterranean West, 5.000 in Central Europe, 3.000 in Western Europe.There is no
cultural breakup in the geographical area of Celts in Europe; the funerary variations of rites
(burial cremation) do not show replacement of populations, but only local cultural evolutions.
But Marija Gimbutas as for her, thinks that proto-Indo-Europeans left the South of Russia, the
territory of the pit graves. This civilization of the Mesolithic era located between the Volga and
the rivers of the Ural is characterized indeed by the early taming of horses.What’s more, the
only vestiges of this civilization, some graves, known as Kurgans, indicate that it is a
patriarchal and very hierarchical society, apparently founded on a tripartite organization
deduced in an abstract way by the French George Dumezil, in the class of warriors, priests
and shepherds. These Kurgans are indeed collective graves, which makes us suppose an
immolation of the close relations (women and servants) in the event of the death of the
master; practices we find as well in the India of the Brahmans as among the Celts.
The successive ebbs and flows of these graves in Europe make us believe in three waves of
invasion.The first dating back to the end of the fifth thousand years before our era (circa -
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4200) would have been initially limited to the Danube and the Macedonia, causing particularly
the extinction of the civilization of Vinsha (Serbia). Even so this invasion will remain
superficial: the natives sometimes pushing back the invaders as it would be in the case of the
first reached people, the peoples of Danubian civilization, living on the banks of the Dnieper
River, sometimes being assimilated by them.The second wave which will be mainly primarily
the fact of “kurganized” people will take place one thousand years later (around - 3300) and
will have, it seems, more success, since half of Europe is affected: Balkans, North and
Central Italy, South and East Germany, Central Europe, North Turkey. If in the margins, Indo-
European doesn’t keep on, it establishes itself, on the other hand, durably, elsewhere. The
civilization of the bell-shaped beakers, which covers all Western Europe in the third thousand
years before our era, would be therefore of Indo-European origin and could consequently be
Proto-Celtic in a strict sense of the word. Some specialists nevertheless are not of this
opinion, and see in the Beaker civilization peoples only the evolution of the culture of corded
ware ceramic.
It is up to each one to refer to one's preferred authors to solve this enigma. Our only religion
is that of the truth rising from a long well internalized reflection, not that of a truth coming from
above and revealed with a lot of carnyx (trumpets) as in Jericho.
It is only from the third wave (around 2800), of less extension than the preceding one, that
had to begin to set the first properly Indo-European languages: the Aryan and Greek
languages on a side which will turn themselves to the south, the Italic-Celtic-Germanic
languages which will turn themselves to the north.
N.B. It goes without saying that such a geographical spreading must have for corollary an
ethnic beginning of fragmentation. The community of Proto-Indo-Europeans therefore breaks,
and a question is asked consequently, in connection with the group which will give rise to the
Celts, to the Ligurians and to the Italic peoples. Are these Old-Europeans still some Proto-
Celts or are they already straightforwardly some Celts? This question involves another one:
and the people who, going down the Rhine, will penetrate in the British Isles at the dawn of
the second thousand years, who are they really?Their round barrows are pit-grave, therefore
at the very least they are “Indo-Europeans“; but do they have already all the characteristics of
Proto-Celts? Is it allowed to anticipate somewhat and to call them “Goidels,” like their distant
descendants?From the arrival of these Indo-Europeans in Western Europe, it is possible to
distinguish a few great periods but in all cases the ancestors of the Celts are to be sought
among the first Indo-Europeans having gone up the Danube and having populated the alpine
area.
THE IMPROBABLE ITALO-CELTIC COMMUNITY.
Some authors have put forward the assumption of the existence, in the third thousand years
before our era, elsewhere in the Austrian Alps (in the broadest sense of the word) of a vast
human unit having grouped the speakers of the future Italic languages (of which Latin) and
future Celtic languages. The majority of specialists currently think that the lexicon as well as
the grammatical elements common to these two branches, of the large family of the Indo-
European languages (Italic languages and Latin, on the one hand, Celtic languages on the
other hand) are explained either by the existence of a more or less long period of linguistic
community in this area of the Alps, after the breakup of the common Indo-European; either by
persistence within them and because of a strong linguistic conservatism common to both
groups, of archaic roots or features dating back to the aforementioned common Indo-
European; or by mutual borrowing BECAUSE OF THE GEOGRAPHICAL PROXIMITY. This
geographic proximity is….
Missing here approximately three pages.
EUROPE OF BRONZE AGE.
As we already have had the opportunity to say it, Bronze Age followed a transitional period
called Copper Age or Chalcolithic even Eneolithic (2500-1800 before our era). The spreading
of copper metallurgy is done through the Aegean Sea, the Adriatic and the Balkans. It
reaches Western Europe around -2.500. Circa 1.800 before our era, tin is added to copper in
order to produce this alloy which is called bronze. It is adopted quickly, because its metallurgy
129
is easier. But bronze does not supplant immediately and radically the stone: their use is
simultaneous during a certain time.With this new alloy, new objects appear: bracelets,
necklaces, first fibulas, pins; but also new weapons such as axes, daggers, halberds or
swords, initially. Then armors, helmets, belts, shields… These weapons are testament to a
period when the war and the warriors, who from now on, can use horses and chariots, seem
to be in favor. The multiplication of agricultural, but also metallurgical, wealth, had to involve
desires.At that time, warrior appears revered. In early Bronze, he lies with his armament:
daggers, bows and arrowheads. In late Bronze, he adorns himself with magnificent armors,
puts impressive helmets on his head, and parades on a palfrey (horse) adorned too with
leather and bronze.The men of Bronze belonged to oral tradition peoples. However, at the
end of this period, a whole series of decorations known on the pottery seems to match
symbolic signs. They are small dancing characters, chariots, horses, suns, saint Andrew’s or
Patrick’s crosses (labarum)… It would seem that their repetition and their association
correspond already to messages.During this period the trade will develop, because
sometimes it is necessary to go very far in order to seek the raw materials necessary to the
making of this alloy. Tin comes from Armorica or Cornwall (South-West of England) and
copper from the Alps or from Eastern Europe. Amber, very prized, comes from the coasts of
the North Sea and of the Baltic, and then passes through the Rhine.Bronze introduction is
made nevertheless without disrupting neither the agricultural techniques nor the habits. The
way of life remains especially very rural with small communities of whom main activities
remain farming and breeding. It is at that time that the use of the swing plow, ancestor of the
plow, is attested.During this period, important innovations appear in the funerary rites: the
burial of dead under “mounds” reveals the emergence of a hierarchy in the society. At the end
of the Bronze Age, the cremation makes its appearance: the ashes of late are left, with his
broken weapons, in urns gathered in graveyards, currently known as “urn fields“.
DAILY LIFE DURING BRONZE AGE by Francis Pryor, director of the excavations in Fengate
and Flag Fen.
The housing is very varied, archaeologists found traces of rectangular, round, and oblong
houses with paved or out of beaten earth floors. In North, only the plain housing is known,
and the villages are generally settled along the rivers. The houses are often smaller than
during the Neolithic era and seem to be gathered in small units, which is the expression of a
more “individualistic” society, than before. At the end of the Bronze Age, the appearance of
insecurity leads to better protecting the villages, and we see therefore palisades made with
wooden stakes and large ditches, appear.The house of the Bronze Age which was
reconstituted at Villeneuve-d'Ascq in the North of France, according to excavations made in
Seclin, has a round shape; influence of Cornwall where the men were going to seek the tin
which they needed for the precious alloy; with a small access corridor south-east opening. It
has a size definitely more reduced than that of the Neolithic era, and its roof, covered with
thatch, has a conical shape. Seven main posts knocked into the ground support the rafters
which meet at the top of the roof. The small access corridor has a roof with a double slope
and the walls are cob covered. Above the door, a wattle not covered with cob makes a more
important air renewal possible, what is, however, not enough to avoid the stubborn smoke
smell when there is a fire in the hearth.
The food of the Bronze Age was simpler than ours, and it did not include, of course, all that
the children in our time take for granted. Spaghetti, noodles, mayonnaise, potatoes, sweet
corn, chocolate, sugar, tea, coffee or fizzy drinks. Animals which are familiar to us, hens and
rabbits for example, did not exist yet.
What could well therefore these men eat for breakfast at the time?To begin, they used neither
knife nor fork, and probably ate with their fingers. The containers containing food were
wooden plates or raw clay bowls, glass not yet existing. And never pork, salted or smoked, in
the menu!
However, it would have been very difficult to cut it in thin slices. There were well eggs, but
their size was smaller, and they were not hen eggs. Those of the birds nesting on the ground:
plovers, geese, and ducks were to be the easiest to be found. These eggs were very nutritive
130
and very tasty. In periods of shortage, people were satisfied with eggs of smaller birds,
nesting on the ground, like the larks, and the children probably took pleasure to empty the
nests of birds liking more particularly the hedges, such the sparrows and the thrushes. But in
winter therefore, nobody ate eggs. Today, we can go to the supermarket and buy there in any
season fruits or vegetables which grow only during the summer in the North of Europe. The
lettuces, for example, are cultivated in heated greenhouses or are imported from countries
with warmer climates, like Spain or Israel. But, in the Bronze Age, there was no tarred road
like today, and transport was much slower. Impossible therefore to import such food products,
it was consequently necessary to be satisfied with food available in the various seasons of the
year. Who knows? It will perhaps be necessary one day, in a few decades, to return to such a
way of life (locavores, at least in France, call that an inevitable but sustainable degrowth).In
the Bronze Age, the majority of the families lived on agriculture. The farms were, of course,
much smaller than our current farms, and each family had probably only one small livestock:
one or two cows, some pigs and some goats sometimes a dozen sheep. They also
cultivated cereals such as corn, barley and oats. The grains were ground in flour using hand
millstones made of natural rocks. The mills powered by water or by wind did not exist yet.
They churned part of the milk to make butter, and the flour was used to make bread, which
they baked in clay ovens built with many precautions. The basic food of Northern Europe -
bread and butter - therefore existed already, but they had quite a different taste, bread being
much coarser than nowadays and butter without salt.As for clothing, they were too, simpler as
those of today. No zippers, of course, no synthetic fibers like nylon. Silk existed only in China
and in the outlying areas, cotton remained to be discovered. Therefore women spun and the
wool of sheep was woven to make the most part of clothing, which had consequently the
brown color of the sheep fleece. It will be only around the end of the Bronze Age that some
farmers will try various crossbreeding between sheep with white, black and gray fleeces (the
dominant ideology in vogue today and especially in France with regard to the human beings it
is, not to keep to the simple laws of love and of chance in this field, which would be quite
normal, but to increase such a process on a worldwide scale and for the same reasons); what
made it possible to weave clothing with a little more attractive pattern. Shoes and belts were
out of leather, just like today. The leather was soaked with grease to make it waterproof.The
metal which gave its name at that time of our History was heated in clay kilns under the
attentive eye of highly experienced craftsmen. These men were to have a high social status.
As writing didn't exist, these prehistory metallurgists conveyed their knowledge orally, from
generation to generation. They were to have a good memory, because art to melt and work
bronze is difficult. Their task could sometimes be very dangerous: if the kiln or a mold was
split, molten metal spread immediately, being able to cause serious wounds. Bronze was a
very precious material at that time, and men were more careful in order not to waste it.The
children of the Bronze Age did not go to school. What they knew of their village, their family
and their ancestors, they learned it from the mouth of the old members of the community.
Perhaps in the form of songs or of poems declaimed around a fire during the long winter
months. No matter like the History in the teaching program, since there was no writing
system. But it was important to know the stories and the legends of one’s region. The children
knew who played a great role in their village, and what awaited them if they did something
wrong.During the day, they helped in the chores, repairing the cob walls as well as the
thatched roof or giving a hand by feeding the animals, milking the cows or weeding. More and
more responsibilities were probably entrusted to them as they grew up. Childhood itself ended
when they were 14 or 15 years old by a great celebration. At the end of the ceremony, which
perhaps took place in a particular site, the boy became officially a man and the girl a woman.
They could then marry. It is probable that during the ceremony, the boy received a sword or a
lance of bronze, and the girl some ornament objects out of bronze, even out of gold. This
ceremony was organized by the chief of the village or a high priest, and there is no doubt that
it was one of the crucial moments of the life of an individual. It was completed by a feast and
some dances until late in the night.N.B. Note of Peter DeLaCrau. And it was enough! There
was no need for more complications or fuss to begin the life of a woman or of a man worthy of
the name, full and not mutilated!Admittedly, the life during the Bronze Age was less easy than
nowadays. But there was also less nervousness or nervous breakdown, and the peace and
quiet of the day were not disturbed by the ceaseless din of cars, trucks, trains and planes.
Diseases of no importance, like influenza, were often fatal, but there were no bombs, nor
131
drugs, nor firearms, nor pollution, nor car accidents. If you could choose, what would you
prefer?
And now two recipes in order to give you a small taste of the Bronze Age.Nettles puree.To put
nettle sheets in boiling water and to leave there until they are well soft. To dry carefully and to
chop finely. To heat again, while adding butter and salt as required. You can make similar
puree with sorrel, dandelion, spinach, sow thistle, watercress, and meadow cress (If you use
only dandelion and sow thistle, with bitterer taste, to change water after five minutes of
boiling). By making cook quickly and in much water, you will preserve best vitamins than by
cooking slowly and on a low heat.
Bread.Ten soup spoons (150 ml) of barley flour. Ten soup spoons (150 ml) of oat flour. A salt
pinch. Fifty g of butter.Milk.To mix the two flours and the salt in a bowl, then to blend butter.
To gradually add milk to make a paste firm, but not sticking. To give it a round and flat shape
and to make cook slowly on a grid above fire.
Locavore friends, on your marks!
CIVILIZATION OF UNETICE (Czech name) or AUNJETITZ (Germanized name).
Unetice’s civilization is a civilization of the early Bronze in Central Europe (from 2.300 before
our era to 1.600 before our era approximately). The eponymous city of Unetice is located in
North-West of Prague in Bohemia (Czech Republic). The prehistorians consider that it was
developed by the ancestors of the Celts, Veneti, and Illyrians; those also of the Ligurians).The
first excavations made in Unetice in 1879, revealed a necropolis with burials. Then a whole
civilization stretching over the territory of the current Czech Republic, the center and the south
of Germany, and the west of Poland, was highlighted. A civilization being characterized by its
torcs, its battle axes and its fibulas (pins for clothing) made out of bronze, of which important
deposits were discovered.Although later than the beaker civilization, the civilization of Unetice
does not stem from it.According to the chronology of early Bronze established by Paul
Reinecke, specialists distinguish two periods.- 2300 1950 before our era: triangular daggers
or knives, flat axes, stone wrist guards, flint arrowheads.- 1950 1700 before our era:
daggers with metal handle, flanged axes, halberds, pins with perforated round head,
bracelets.Generally built on hills, the villages of Unetice’s civilization are surrounded by
wooden palisades. The houses, five to ten meters long, are out of wood and cob, with a
wooden or a beaten earth floor. Sometimes, the walls are decorated with a geometrical
pattern. In the greatest units, like Barca in Slovakia, true streets, 2, 50 m broad, separate the
houses, which have sometimes several rooms.In the necropolises, the corpses in fetal
position, facing east, are sometimes also accompanied by offerings. The marks of wealth or
social hierarchy are rare, we find double or triple burials what makes us think of
“accompanying dead.” Women and servants buried near the late potentate. The old Celtic
language had besides a verb to indicate these human sacrifices: “arecomregino“(Cf. Welsh
argyurein).
Other funerary practices appear, as the burial in urns, perhaps of Anatolian origin, in wooden
coffins, or the first mounds. Trepanning is practiced.From the economic point of view , the
Unetice’s civilization is characterized by the practice of the breeding of sheep, pig and cattle,
as by a stag and wild boar hunting. The domesticated horse is present, as many curb bits
show ... Regarding farming,the ground is worked with wooden swing plow, sometimes also
with a polished stone plowshare.Exchanges are attested through all Central Europe, with the
management of mines of copper in Slovakia, of tin in Bohemia, of gold in Transylvania, and
the export of axes, daggers and jewels.Managing the tin mines in the Metalliferous
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Mountains, the bearers of the civilization of Unetice had largely exported their productions in
the close areas, where they were sometimes imitated.
The civilization of Unetice exerts its influence throughout Bohemia, Moravia, Lower Austria,
Silesia, and Saxony-Thuringia. In this last zone appears a facies characterized by princely
large mounds (Helmsdorf, Leubingen) containing a wooden funerary room, hut-shaped; the
high-placed persons buried in these graves can be tradesman warriors controlling the trade of
weapons.An advance towards the Balkan South is also noticed, with undermining of
Mycenaean influence civilizations; towards South-east, prelude to penetration in Anatolia;
towards West with the spread of mounds; towards the North-West with the appearance of the
round barrows in the British Isles, where the burial with “long barrows” was previously
practiced. Hand in hand with these princely burials, there is also spreading of non-bell-shaped
objects with zoned decoration.Also advance towards the North (Southern Denmark, Norway
and Sweden). This Unetice’s civilization, second Bronze Age, therefore seems to have been
the melting pot of an ethnogenesis mixing the dolichocephalic ones come from the steppes
with horses and chariots, and the brachycephalic Neolithic ones. As for Anau, the first finally
imposed their language and the seconds the prevalence of their bodily characteristics:
therefore no more European “race” here than “Aryan” race over there, but an extended
civilization community.As we could see, the center of this civilization was located near the
Bohemian quadrilateral, because it was an area rich in various ores. Until circa - 1.500, it will
form a pole of commercial exchanges and of cultural influence. It will be the spreading center
of the fashion of the burials under mounds, alias kurgans, barrows, huegelgraber… We see it
covering then in Europe the territory of the old prehistoric civilizations known as civilization of
Salcuta (Romania), of Bubanj-Hum (Serbia) of Lengyel (Hungary), of Michelsberg (Germany),
of Campigny and of Chassez (France).
THE CIVILIZATION OF THE TUMULI OR BURIAL MOUNDS.
From 2000 years to 1700 years before our era, the mound civilization develops gradually
marking the end of the Neolithic era. During this period, a zone of peopling is formed which,
from South Germany in the South, reaches a part of Central and Western Europe.The
funerary practice of these proto-Celts is the tumulus with burial. The graves shelter the bodies
of chiefs adorned with their bronze weapons, with jewels out of amber and gold, with gold and
silver crockery. The main witnesses are the barrows themselves; we can quote among most
remarkable those of Kallmunz in Palatinate, Eching in Bavaria. The bronze artifacts include
dirks, a great variety of fibulas (some pins), flanged palstaves, some bracelets as well as
decorated greaves, grip-tang swords with massive hilt, shield umbos...
Ceramics provide kinds of globular amphoras with vertical neck, decorated with geometrical
patterns, and small handled cups.
In North Germany (Luneburg) coffins made of an oak trunk, axe cut up then hollowed out, as
in the Danish mounds, appear.The peoples are organized on a hierarchical basis as the
burials of the time show: single use mound for the chiefs (princes) with rich archeological
material, more modest graves for the others.The techniques used are based on knowledge
resulting from the Neolithic past (flagstones, stones). The economy is an economy with
pastoralist predominance.N. B. the Celtic or Proto-Celtic characteristic of this stage is
sometimes disputed.It is why...
Approximately two pages are missing here.
URNFIELD CIVILIZATION (Urnenfelderkultur in German authors).
As for central Europe at the end of the Bronze Age, the border between the Lusatian
civilization in the north and the Knoviz civilization in the south corresponds very precisely to
the border which will later separate the Germanic or Slavic world from the Celtic world namely
the powerful Celtic tribe of Boians (present-day Czech), so we will make the peoples of the
Urnfield culture whose civilization of Knoviz is a regional variant, the ancestors of the first
133
indisputable Celts, those of the Hallstatt civilization.A major cultural change takes place
indeed in prehistoric Europe, around 1000. Circa 1.200 before our era, the intensive use of
bronze involves considerable changes in the life of men, decisive progress is achieved.
- In the bronze technique: casting in molds, hammering under heat, hardening by strain
hardening making possible to manufacture weapons (knives, swords) much sharper than
those that were manufactured out of stone or bone.
- In the ceramic technique: the potter manages to get, without the help of the wheel, an
extraordinary evenness of the surface, thinness, shine, and finish. The baking art improves;
after the kilns dug in the ground, the built kilns appear.
- In farming techniques: the improvement of the sickle, the appearance of the wheeled
vehicles, the swing plow and the scythe, contributed to the agrarian expansion and to the
settling.
- In defense town planning: at this point in time “hillforts“ or fortified villages located on the
heights, in the lake islands, or in the middle of marshes, grow in number. The origins of the
majority of the Celtic refuges date back to that time. Many cities have their roots in these
remote times.
- In the commercial exchanges: to make bronze, it is necessary to go and seek (rare) tin, and
copper, very far. Tin comes from Armorica or from Great Britain, copper comes from the Alps
or from Eastern Europe. Important exchanges therefore will grow between these peoples and
the avid of bronze Mediterranean world (Greeks and Etruscans). The research of amber
(which comes from the Baltic as well as from the North Sea) and of salt (which comes from
the salt springs in Austria) also will contribute to these exchanges.
- In the funerary rites: these peoples break, for a certain time, with the use of the mound and
the rite of burial, they practice the cremation and the flat grave, in open ground. The corpses
of late are burned, their ashes are put in urns gathered in collective cemeteries out of the
villages (later, the Celts will take over the use of the mound for chiefs).This civilization of “urn-
fields” (Urnenfelderkulturin the German authors) has a considerable importance, it is there
that are the roots of Celtic peopling, of the occupancy and of the work of the lands.A very
clear civilization border will separate; for example, in Bohemia along Upper Elba, as soon as
the second half of the second thousand years before our era (from - 1.300 to - 900); the
villages of the civilization known as Culture of Knoviz, from those, neighboring, of the
adjoining Lusatian complex. From which, however, they seem to result. It was to match the
northern limit of the distant ancestors of the native Celts in this area, the historical Boians
(Venceslas Kruta. Revista de Guimarães, Especial Volume, I, Guimarães, 1999, p. 51 -
85).The urn-field civilization is therefore the spreading of new cultures and of metallurgical
and ceramic techniques, which takes place in Europe during the late Bronze Age. To end at
the very beginning of the Iron Age.It matches people's movements, migrations by successive
waves, from Western Central Europe. The expansion of this mode of burial is indeed noted in
all Central and Western Europe, to Ireland through Belgium, Holland, North and East of
France. From Saxony, Silesia and south of Germany or Austria, to Syria, Carinthia, and the
area of Villanova in Italy, not forgetting Spain (Catalonia). The arrival into the south of the
Pyrenees of peoples pertaining to the Urnfield civilization matches indeed the settlement on
the spot of Celtic elements of the very first generation (Q Celtic language).
HALLSTATT CIVILIZATION OR FIRST IRON AGE.(Between 900 and 480 before our era.)
As a result of influences come from east and from the Mediterranean Sea (trade with Greeks
and Etruscans), Celtic civilization strictly speaking establishes itself in Western Europe: South
Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, East France, Spain, and Great Britain. For many
researchers indeed, the origins of a settlement we can really associate with the name Celts,
are to be sought in the Hallstatt civilization which appears at the end of the Urnfield
civilization. The eponymous site of Hallstatt is located approximately 225 km to the south of
Vienna in Austria, where a necropolis including more than 2.000 burials was discovered and
excavated. The inhabitants of Hallstatt worked salt mines which they had dug out (with 400 m
long galleries). This necropolis of Hallstatt undoubtedly reflects not very common prosperity,
attributable to these rock salt layers in the area and to the vicinity of amber road. The
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excavations revealed nearly a thousand burials sometimes with cremation, sometimes with
burial. Archeological material, of a remarkable richness, includes bronze and especially iron
swords, daggers, lances, armor parts. And more particularly an exceptional series of
hammered bronze vases, situlae, cups, plates, which show the importance of the Italian-
Greek trade. The Oedenburg and Gemeinlebarn burials are famous for their polychrome urns
with figurative decorations (chariots, birds). One often quoted as being one of the most
beautiful examples of Hallstattian plastic art, the votive chariot of Strettweg (Styria)
transporting a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if one prefers, accompanied by warriors as well
as symbolic animals (stags). The wheeled cauldron of Peccatel (Mecklenburg) and Milavce
(Bohemia) are also famous (they are actually wagons carrying kinds of disproportionate
cauldrons).It is impossible to give here in a few lines an even surface idea of the wealth of
Hallstattian civilization in Central Europe. Several groups, which are mainly distinguished by
pottery and fibulas, were identified: a South-Eastern or Adriatic group, a Central or Danubian
group, an Elba-Oder group, a Rhenish group. The huge necropolis of Glasinatz in Bosnia
pertains to the Adriatic group, of which the number of mounds is estimated 20.000 units
(even more than in the case of Mag Tured in Ireland). Greek and Italic influences are obvious
there; we found particularly in them an ornithomorphic (bird-shaped) cult chariot and cnemids
or greaves out of engraved bronze, imitated from Greek models. Amber was collected there in
abundance.The first Iron Age or period known as Hallstattian (850 450 before our era)
matches a period of major changes in the traditional rural societies inherited from Bronze
Age.
These transformations are mainly marked by the development of increasingly non-egalitarian
societies, which enter the economic , and soon cultural, dependence, on Mediterranean urban
societies, Greek then Etruscan.This mother civilization of Hallstatt was a little arbitrarily cut
out in several periods: Hallstatt I until 700, even 650; Hallstatt II from 650 to 550
according to some authors, from 700 to 500, according to others.This civilization, from the
point of view of archaeology, was also divided in Western Hallstatt, probable work of the
Celts, corresponding to the initial site having given its name to this civilization, and Eastern
Hallstatt, attributed to Illyrian-Venetic people.With regard to the Western Hallstattian center,
its initial territory covers first Bavaria, Austrian Alps, Bohemia-Moravia and Thuringia.It
stretches quickly to the Rhine, and, as the cross-checking of archaeology and toponymy
shows , this cultural area will become the cradle of Celts in the proper sense of the word. It is
not a stricto sensu “race” but a linguistic ethnic group cemented by a cultural community. We
note its expansion through stages towards the west beyond the Rhine, to reach the middle
course of the Loire River and the East half of the Paris Basin.An advance then towards
South-West covering the Massif Central, to go to butt against the first foothills of the
Pyrenees. Then, some drawing back on this side, under the Iberian pressure. The advance of
the Iberian peoples in the Ebro valley would then have broken the direct geographical contact
established since the arrival of peoples pertaining to the Urnfield civilization, with the other
Celts north of the Pyrenees, leading therefore each other to evolve separately (P Celtic
language in the north of the Pyrenees, Q Celtic languages in the south, in the center of the
peninsula, or P Celtic language,in the North-West of the peninsula). In short, a rather
complicated situation, as complicated as that of Novempopulania in the third century (a subtle
mix of Celts: Tarbelli, Convenae, Bigerri, Boiates and of proto-Basques). Because if the Gauls
never existed, it was not the case of the non-Gauls , who themselves claimed not to be Gallic.
Reality therefore is always complex, like Aesop’s tongue, and a staunch racist must therefore
always somewhat moderate his convictions while thinking of that: there is no more French
race nor pure race than Abraham’s or Cohen’s gene, squared circles or roasted-spit
butter.Besides the Basque is currently spoken in zones where formerly, it was unknown.
During the Middle Ages, when the Basques of the mountains in the North settled in the new
lands won over Muslims, the Basque for example expanded into the Rioja-Burgos
area.Regarding Celts, the seafront of North-West is reached, from the Cotentin to the
Western Friesland. A kind of ethnic border is stabilized durably between Celts and Germanic
peoples, the first holding Silesia, Lusatia, Saxony, Harz massif, Westphalia and the
Netherlands; the seconds, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg, Altmark, Anhalt and Brandenburg. In
this zone of Celtic-Germanic touch, observation : a Celticist or Celtic-speaking aristocracy
monitors some Germanic communities.Jointly to the Celtic community living in the West of
this Hallstattian area and to the Illyrian community living in the East of the aforesaid
civilization area, it is also necessary to mention the Ligurian community, made up of pre-Indo-
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European substrates, assimilated by adoption of the language of the conquerors of Bronze
Age. Among the archeological sites, those of Vix-Mont-Lassois, of the Pegue, and of
Mastramela, show the tendencies of this group.For these three ethnic groups, Celtic, Ligurian
and Illyrian, the time of Hallstatt’s civilization appears to have been that of a kind of Common
Market, with an active trade network: metals, salt, handcrafted products. It is, roughly
speaking between 650 and - 520, a European market of small princely states. This
community stretched thus from Hungary to North of Spain.Generally, the period is marked by
an increasingly important use of iron and by a greater mastery of the work of this metal.
However, the techniques and the materials of Bronze Age were still used in parallel and the
use of bronze will continue. Iron is an ore much more widespread and easier to work than
copper and tin, it is also more resistant and more cutting. Iron therefore does not require
important commercial exchanges like tin and copper.Hallstatt is characterized by very
elaborate funerary rites, with cremation or burial according to the times. The important
persons were buried in funerary rooms under a mound with a ceremonial chariot like in Vix or
Hochdorf (close to Stuttgart) in Germany.From the eighth to the sixth century before our era,
the fortified sites multiply. These villages fortified with ramparts made of earth, stones and
beams, were located on heights. They are ruled by an aristocracy which grows rich while
controlling the major routes of the goods. True princely courts appear, they borrow foreign
ways of life, for example wine consumption. Vix grave is an example of this sumptuous time
(four wheeled chariots grave).The Celts enter the History by creating a specific form of art
(appearance of torcs at the end of the Iron Age), and a civilization which is peculiar to
them.Hallstatt art is characterized by repetitive geometrical patterns. The pottery, various, is
often decorated with incision. Many imported objects were also discovered, which show the
trade relations with the Mediterranean countries and the rest of Europe.
THE CIVILIZATION OF GOLASECCA.
Golasecca is a city close to Como in north Italy. It gives its name to the civilization of the
proto-Celts in Italy, at the beginning of the Iron Age.The study of the territory occupation
shows the emergence of urban centers (Como and Castelletto Ticino-Sesto Calende). In the
sixth -fifth century before our era these centers are characterized by the presence of several
social classes (peasants, craftsmen, trade aristocracy) and by a functional layout of space,
districts based: residential, craft (pottery and metallurgy), trade (river ports associated with
warehouses ) and shrines. These elements reveal a social structure complex and organized
where peasants, craftsmen, merchants live together alongside an elite which makes the most
of productivity as well as of average and long-distance trade.Golasecchiani are mainly
distinguished from the civilization of Hallstatt by their necropolises with cremation (ashes of
late are put in an urn or in a bowl) and especially by the early use of writing (first half of the
sixth century before our era), resulting from the adaptation of the north-Etruscan alphabet to a
phonetics pertaining to the Celtic languages group (see Lugano alphabet).The Celtic know-
how as concern the speech, the early getting of writing as the instrument of a better control of
the market, the strong craft activity, are the factors which explain the success of the
“Golasecca civilization” in the partial management of through the Alps trade. Merchants,
peddlers, craftsmen therefore travel all over Europe in search of raw materials as tin or more
precious materials like amber. They also carry out the transshipment of precious even luxury
objects which, coming from the Mediterranean Sea, were intended for the Celtic elites settled
in the north of the Alps. Political marriages come to strengthen the links forged by the
Golasecchiani since at least the final Bronze with all the most powerful partners of the
European protohistory: Celts, Etruscans, Greeks and Picenians.
The arrival of the Celts of La Tene civilization at the end of the fifth century before our era will
not change deeply this brilliant civilization. It will evolve by coloring itself with La Tene
aspects, but will remain distinct. Insubres (main town Milan) are regarded as descendants of
this first proto-Celtic wave in North Italy….
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CELTS OF IBERIAN PENINSULA.
The word Celtiberian generally refers to the Celtic or Celtized peoples in the Iberian
Peninsula, as well as to the languages these groups spoke. But the term specifically
designates a whole of Celtic people acculturated by Iberians, others of them exists
nevertheless known as Vettones, Lusitanians, etc.Archaeology shows that the Celts arrived in
the Iberian Peninsula during the 13th century before our era, with the great expansion of the
peoples of the urn-field civilization by occupying the north-eastern area (Catalonia)The use of
iron even of some elements of Hallstattian influence developed in the urn-field civilization of
the North-East of the Iberian Peninsula from the eighth century before our era. First traces of
this last civilization have been found along the lower course of the Ebro River, then more and
more upstream to the area of La Rioja and in a local form to the province of Alava in Euzkady
(Basque Country). There was also expansion towards the south of Catalonia in Castellon
Province, some influences going even further. Some consequences of this civilization appear
along the Iberian mountains, perhaps a prelude to the formation of Celtiberian peoples (F.
Jordá Cerdá et Al., Historia de España I: Prehistoria, 1986). Social differences became more
visible during this period: evidence of local leaderships and of an elite with horses.These
changes were perhaps brought about by the arrival of new waves of peopling from Central
Europe.Of these outposts settled on the higher course of Ebro River, Celtic civilization
reached the central plateau (the Meseta) and the Atlantic coast. Several groups can be
distinguished.
The group of Bernorio-Miraveche (north of Burgos and province of Palencia) which will
exert its influence over the peoples of the northern fringe.
The group of the Duero River, probable precursors of Vaccei.
Cogotas II culture, probably precursors of the Vettones, with marked pastoralist
characteristic, which will extend gradually towards the south, in Extremadura.
The group of Lusitanian castros, in the center of Portugal, precursors of the Lusitanians.
The group of North-West castros, in the north of Portugal and in Galicia, relative of the
precedents but with some differences due to the influences of an Atlantic Bronze Age
substrate.All these Indo-European peoples had common elements, like ceramics since the
sixth century before our era as well as the same armament.From - 600 the Urnfield civilization
of the North-East and of the middle Ebro valley was replaced by Iberian civilization, a process
which was completed only towards the fourth century before our era. This geographical
separation from their Celtic neighbors in the north undoubtedly explains why the Celts of the
Iberian Peninsula were not affected by the linguistic phenomenon which is the Brittonic
language, had never pertained to the civilization of La Tene and why their religion, although
obviously Celtic, perhaps did not experiment the institution of druidism.An “oversight” that
nothing prevents us from repairing.
The main Celtiberian peoples were Arevaci, Berones, Carpetani (at least partly), Lusones,
Turmogi, Pelendones and Vaccei. Their Western neighbors, Cantabrians, Asturians, and the
people of the current Galicia, as those who lived in the North of Portugal, were also members,
at least partly, of the Celtic family.The Celtic peopling of Europe is former several centuries to
the traditional hypothesis, which makes it dating back to the seventh or eighth century before
our era.The studies of Venceslas Kruta show that the invasion of Western Europe by the
historical Celts; i.e., those who spread in Europe in the first half of the first thousand years,
coming from the Celtic “cradle” in Central Europe; was in fact preceded in most parts of the
continent, in the center and in the west, of a strong Proto-Celtic substrate, dating back to a
much older period, of at least six or seven centuries. The historical Celts invaded areas
already occupied by Proto-Celtic, or culturally related, peoples, like the Ligurians. i.e.,
speaking a language close to old Celtic, and having social and religious structures just as
close to those of their invaders.Celtiberians would result therefore from the evolution of these
proto-Celtic cultures of the Bronze Age, rather than from a mixing between the historical Celts
and the preceding cultures. Even if the historical Celts arrived into this peninsula, while
leaving there visible traces of their stay.
Sufficient traces remain to show that Celtiberian was a Q-Celtic language (like Gaelic), and
not a P-Celtic language like the Gaulish (Mallory 1989, p. 106). The longest Celtiberian
inscriptions are the bronze tablets of Botorrita close to Saragossa, and dating back to the first
century of our era, called Botorrita I, III and IV (Botorrita II is written in Latin).Its writing is a
Paleohispanic script forming an almost direct adaptation of the north-Eastern Iberian script to
the characteristics of the Celtiberian language. There is no consensus as for the origin of
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these Paleohispanic scripts: some people think that they result from the Phoenician alphabet
whereas others see in them influences of the Greek alphabet.
THE LA TENE CIVILIZATION (second Iron Age).
According to the discoveries made at La Tene in Switzerland.From the point of view of
archaeology, the hundred years from - 550 to - 450 mark the transition between the
civilization of Hallstatt and that of La Tene (also known as Latenian). After what specialists
distinguish La Tene I (until circa - 350), La Tene II (- 350 to - 150) and La Tene III finally
(ending with Julius Caesar circa - 55). La Tene art is characterized by swords 80 cm long,
entwined plant frieze, and the adaptation of patterns of Mediterranean origin.At the beginning
of the fifth century before our era, the princely fortresses of previous periods are deserted
without that we know the true reasons for the phenomenon. Population concentrates from
now on in the areas where trade relays are located (Rhine, Champagne…). The tribes, ruled
by local chiefs, wage war on each other. Large farms prevail in the rural world. The warrior's
leaders are buried in vast necropolises, in a two wheeled chariot accompanied by the harness
of the horses.On the Continent a troubled period of setting in motion of the Celtic peopling,
become too dense in the old Hallstattian cradle, begins. For various reasons: search for
cultivable ground, for pastures, plundering desires, evacuation of population surplus, or quite
simply spirit of adventure, the peoples settled since half-thousand years, or more, in these
areas, will be set in motion in all directions. Various local overpopulation, as well as the
search for adventures and booty, therefore cause a half-thousand years of overall expansion,
with, of course, some advances and some drawing back.
This La Tene time, for which the techniques of prehistoric archaeology are still necessary,
forms already part, either of Protohistory, or of History period. Because information abounds,
thanks to Greek and Latin historians; although it is necessary to interpret these accounts,
often distorted by bad comprehension of the initial data through a whole chain of informants,
or then made biased by anti Celt racism (Celtic bashing).The maximum expansion of the
Celts happens in the fourth and third centuries before our era, and we can speak here about
Celts to the strictest sense of the word. Contrary to what you might think, these migrations do
not take a massive characteristic; the Celts establish themselves by small groups and are
assimilated to the original settlement . They are attracted by the agricultural and trade wealth
of Western Europe, they flee their overpopulated lands as well as a climate which deteriorates
(colder and wetter). The classic authors speak about these Celts as terrible barbarians (wild);
riding stripped to the waist (to face their enemies) but helmeted, on small horses kind ponies,
a long sword in their hand.They spread in Belgium, in Gaul, in Spain, and cross the Channel.
Circa 390 before our era, some Celts of the tribe of the Senones (or Bituriges), led by a
person by the name Brennos; if the latter is not a euhemerization in the wrong way of a war
Celtic god-or-demon having this name; enter North Italy. They besiege an Etruscan city:
Clusium (Chiusi). Roman ambassadors cease being neutral or referees and side against the
Celts. The latter leave the siege to go and punish Rome for this interference. The two armies
meet on the Allia River. Brennos, 60.000 men strong, inflicts the Romans (40 000 men) a
bitter defeat (- 387). The Celts then enter Rome they set on fire, except for the Capitol
(episode of the Capitol geese) which resists seven months. Brennos then agrees to leave the
City in exchange for a ransom of thousand pounds of gold (“woe to the vanquished“: proverb
truer than ever, hypocrisy and cynicism in addition today, and this including the political and
cultural or linguistic levels). But part of these warriors settles in North Italy (Cisalpine).The
Celtic world, during this period (Litavia or Livy’s Celticum), will enjoy its maximum expansion;
mixing and assimilating some peoples often prepared to that by the adoption of Proto-Celtic
or other dialects, not very far away from the linguistic “koinè” of which the high knowers of the
druidiaction (druidecht) will be the promoters, then the maintainers.
After the great period of expansion, the stabilization of the limits of the “tribe-States” was
made so-so.Through a rather quick turn of events, the Celts will return on the Low-Danube,
well decided to go on farther towards the east.Illyrians are crushed. In 281 before our era,
three Celtic armies enter Greece, Thrace and Macedonia. Delphi is plundered in - 279, but
the winter and the disease force the army to withdraw; their chief (another Brennos???)
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commits suicide. It is the famous kingdom of Tylis formed around - 280 by Comontorios and
a part of the Celts of the “Great expedition” led towards Greece.The ancient Tylis could
correspond to the current village of Tulovo (province of Stara Zagora, in Bulgaria).
Polybius. Histories. Book IV. Chapter XLVI.
These Celts had left their country with Brennus, and having survived the battle at Delphi and
made their way to the Hellespont, instead of crossing to Asia, were captivated by the beauty
of the district round Byzantium, so they settled there. Then, having conquered the Thracians
and erected Tylis into a capital, they placed the Byzantines in extreme danger. In their earlier
attacks, made under the command of Comontorius their first king, the Byzantines always
bought them off by presents amounting to three thousand, or five thousand, or sometimes
even ten thousand gold pieces, on condition of their not devastating their territory: and at last
were compelled to agree to pay them a yearly tribute of eighty talents, until the time of
Cavarus, in whose reign their kingdom came to an end; and their whole tribe being in their
turn conquered by the Thracians were annihilated…”
But these Celts also took part in the political stability of the area. Polybius mentioned for
example the fact that Cavarus, last king of Tylis, acted as an intermediary between Prusias
king of Bithynia, and Byzantium.
Polybius. Book IV. Chapter LII.
So when the Celtic king, Cavarus, came to Byzantium, and showed himself eager to put an
end to the war, and earnestly offered his friendly intervention, both Prusias and the
Byzantines consented to his proposals. And when the Rhodians were informed of the
intervention Caruso and the consent of Prusias, being very anxious to secure their own object
also, they elected Aridices as ambassador to Byzantium, and sent Polemocles with him in
command of three triremes, wishing, as the saying is, to send the Byzantines "spear and
herald staff at once." Upon their appearance pacification was arranged, in the year of Cothon,
son of Calligiton, high priest in Byzantium.”
But during the reign of Cavaros, the kingdom of Tylis also collapsed under the attacks of
Thracians, around 218/212 before our era and perhaps also under the effect of the harmful
influence of Sostratus of Chalcedonia, his adviser.
Polybius. Book VIII. Chapter XXIV.
Cavarus, king of the Celts in Thrace, was of a truly royal and high-minded disposition, he
gave the merchants sailing into the Euxine Pontus great protection, and rendered the
Byzantines important services in their wars with the Thracians and Bithynians...But this king,
so excellent in other respects, was corrupted by a flatterer named Sostratus, who was
Chalchedonian...”
The other Celts (Galatai), as soon as 278, after having undergone a defeat against the
Macedonian Antigonus Gonatas, cross into Anatolia and found there a second Gallaikè
Khôrè, the Galatia of Romans.Circa - 250 Britogalai and other Celts reach the Lower Dnieper
and their Carrodunon there will be previous to the current towns of Kherson or Nikolaev, on
the Bug River.Lastly, from - 201 to - 101, it was the great affair of the dramatic migration of
the “Cimbri” from Denmark. Victims of the flooding of their lands by the Baltic Sea , or of
recurrent starvation (in fact we do not know too much) they form an alliance with Teutons and
Ambrones to go and seek lands enjoying a little more sun and less easily flooded. At the end
of long marches and counter-marches towards Pannonia; and then from the Drava River to
the river Main, from the river Main to the Ebro, from the Ebro River to the Seine, then from
the Seine River to the Po ; these “Barbarians” were crushed by the Romans of Marius. Last
(and unfortunate) migration on a large scale of Celtic or Celtized peoples reinforce with
Germanic elements. Last rather than penultimate, because the following attempt of massive
immigration, project of Helvetians in - 58, turned immediately into a disaster. Helvetians and
their allies Rauraci, Latobriges, Tulingi and Boians, had nevertheless meticulously planned
the latter. They had left nothing to chance for that.Their expedition is methodically prepared
and includes no trace of aggressiveness towards other people. Before moving off, they seek
the authorization of those who have the territories to be crossed in order to reach the
concerned territory: that of the Santones in the area of Saintes City and Oleron Island, who
were seekers of such a human contribution (369 000 people).
But everybody doesn’t agree to this policy, and Aedui themselves were divided over the
subject. The best evidence: Dumnorix and Diviciacos (two brothers divided by the question,
and the priest was not the less blind of the two brothers).In short, their senators not having
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succeeded in legally preventing the setting in motion of this massive immigration, the army
therefore opposed it in turn, but this time by force. And with this intention they even call upon
a foreign power (Rome, of course!)The result is known!The unfortunate Helvetian, Rauracian,
Latobrigian, Tulingian and Boian, migrants, were slaughtered, then the survivors brought back
by force at home, where they found again the same problems as before, of course, but
worsened by their exodus (N.B. One risks less today, except being condemned to do the
casual jobs with very low wages of which tenth or hundredth generation immigrants do not
want any more, for example empty the garbage cans, etc.)It was then the turn of the Suevi of
Ariovist (a bilingual and bigamist barbarian king), etc., etc.The fatal spiral had been
started…Taking advantage of the divisions caused by the events, the Roman legions invaded
the rest of the country which lost its independence therefore, and even its identity (its soul, its
spirit).It was what was therefore called the Gallic war. The duty to remember (expression in
vogue at the moment, so much better!) involves never forgetting it if we want to avoid a repeat
of such a national disaster: massacres, occupation, exploitation, slavery, colonization. What a
result for a peaceful attempt to immigrate!Let us understand well each other! Helvetians are
not morally and collectively all to blame! Even if it is actually the attempt to massively
immigrate (369 000 persons of whose 110 000 warriors) imagined by their chief Orgetorix,
which is the cause of this disaster: a million dead and a million prisoners enslaved, in the end,
for the Gallic war. Without speaking about the noncombatant slaughtered or dead because of
the destitution resulting from the war.They were confronted at home to very serious problems,
problems which brought into play their very survival, and they believed to be able to solve
them by leaving in order to settle elsewhere, that is understandable!But it would have been
better perhaps, for everyone, to help them to overcome these challenges, on the spot. For
instance, beyond idiot clannish or tribal divisions, by calling for an authentic international
solidarity of Ambicatus or Ambicatusian Ver sacrum type. In order for example to help these
friendly peoples forced to enter desperate bagaudae against Germanic invaders or occupying
forces.Guiltiest are not these unfortunate immigrants therefore, but those (some priests, of
Saintonge?) who have seen fit to tell them “come” whereas the consensus was far from
existing on this subject. One often accused thereafter the Aeduan party of Diviciacos, of
treason, while considering the end result (the loss of independence), but the responsibility of
the Sequanian party in this drama is just as important. Their more or less clear speech was
indeed a speech of the type: “Come, come, but especially do not remain among us, go and
settle at the others.”The very whole history of Celtic civilization holds between these two
migrations. The successful emigration of Bellovesus and Segovesus (Italy Romania and
Turkey, etc.) and the disastrous immigration of Helvetians, Rauraci, Latobriges, Tulingi and
Boians (from whom the prophet called Mariccus will appear later).
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MARCHES BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES
OF THE CELTIC EMPIRE OF AMBICATUS.
Livy. Book V. Chapter XXXIV.
Regarding the passage of the Celts into Italy, we have received the following account. Whilst
Tarquinius Priscus was king of Rome, the supreme power […] was in the hands of the
Bituriges; they used to furnish the king for the Celticum. Ambigatus was king at that time. A
man eminent for his own personal courage and prosperity as much as for those of his
kingdom. During his sway the harvests were so abundant, and the population increased so
rapidly, that the government of such vast numbers seemed almost impossible. He was now
an old man, and anxious to relieve his realm from the burden of overpopulation. He signified
his intention of sending his sister's sons, Bellovesus and Segovesus, both enterprising young
men, to settle in whatever locality the gods should by augury assign to them. They were free
to invite as many as wished to accompany them, to prevent any nation from repelling their
approach. The forest of Hercynia was assigned to Segovesus when the auspices were taken;
to Bellovesus the gods gave the far pleasanter way, into Italy. Bellovesus invited the surplus
population of the Bituriges, the Averni, the Senones, the Aedui, the Ambarri, the Carnutes,
and the Aulerci, and with an enormous force of horse and foot, he came to the Tricastini.
Beyond stretched the barrier of the Alps.”
Taking into account the length of the civilization of the Celts, which lasts from protohistory to
Middle Ages, and taking into account the dimensions of the geographical space that the Celts
occupied in Europe; it is necessary before tackling the question of the peopling, to point out
what the known and commonly admitted limits for the “Celtic” world (Celtica Litavia) were.
Insofar as they make a synthesis easier, and bring to the ones who are interested in these
questions, some information, without having to consult very distinct works, these
developments are to help to understand the nature of the Celticism-druidism. By a better
apprehension of its origins, as of the importance than it took and kept in the European
Protohistory. Celticity was especially a cultural community of which cohesion was carried out
by the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), great maintainers of the linguistic mutual
comprehension.Because the only means of answering the question: “was there a common
language or not” is to answer the basic question: did the speakers in question understand
themselves nevertheless roughly speaking, in spite of the differences of their dialects? If not
they are different languages! If yes, therefore they are only different dialects of the same
language. A little like our national language and that which is spoken in Canada. The
distinction between language and dialect is indeed based on the possibility of a mutual
comprehension. The speakers of different dialects understanding mutually speak dialects of
the same language. The speakers who do not understand themselves speak different
languages or dialects of different languages. This to answer the intellectuals Rue 89 type.
And that so that people get well into their mind that there was, not an Atlantis, but a huge
Celtic-speaking world ; by no means isolated, consequently influenced from inside (by
various substrates) as well from outside (by various contacts) quite as much as exerting
influence, itself, over its neighborhood.As Camille Jullian saw it very well in his time … “What
was, it is, I say it again, that half of Europe, at least, between 400 and 150 before our era,
spoke Celtic. It is, then that the Celtic language is narrowly linked to the oldest form of the
linguistic unity of Europe. To know the Celtic language, it is therefore to get closer to the
knowledge of the European origins, to the solution of this problem which is most enthralling,
perhaps, in the history of Mankind. If that were possible here for me, I would show that this
idea that this assumption, to which perhaps some linguists would object, finds its
confirmation , not only in linguistic facts, but in archeological facts of any kind; institutions,
religions, ways of fighting and of ruling. I discover at every moment, in the Celtic world before
our era, some vestiges which remind me of oldest Italy, and some vestiges which make me
think of the initial Indo-European. I do not say that the Celt is similar to the latter, far from it.
But among all the men in the past, he is still the one who differs less from the great forebear,
ancestor and founder of the sovereign souls in Mankind “(Camille Jullian).
The Celtic language, a language of civilization, was used then, even in officially not Celtic
language speaking areas. Geography and History, thanks to Greek and Latin authors, show
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tasty examples of that.- Ariovist the famous king of Suevi had a Celtic name and spoke Celtic
language.- Adiatorix, king of Comana, father of the high-priest of Comana, made prisoner at
the close of the battle of Actium, too. His name is Celtic (king of?) Cf. Strabo, book XII,
chapter III, 35.- Gezatorix (still Strabo, book XII, chapter III, section 41, and Polybius) king of
an area located at the North-East of Galatia, but outside, the same thing. His name means
king of Gaesati. Gaesati were warriors whose favorite weapon was called gaisos (a kind of
heavy javelin).- Boiorix, king of Cimbri, also had quite a Celtic name meaning “king of
Boians“ or “king of ?” In 105 before our era, in a rage, he killed Marcus Aemilius Scaurus,
lieutenant of consul Mallius Maximus, he had made a prisoner after having defeated him on
the banks of the Rhone River. Then little time after he crushed the Roman army near Orange
(Arausio). But in - 101 he was defeated in turn with the Cimbri at Vercelli, battle where he met
his fate. “Among these many wretched forms of death, it is reported that two chieftains rushed
upon each other with drawn swords. The kings Lugius and Boiorix fell on the battlefield;
Claodicus and Caesorix were captured. In these two battles three hundred and forty thousand
Celts were slain, and one hundred and forty thousand were captured. This does not include
the countless number of women who, in a fit of feminine frenzy but with manly strength, put
themselves and their little children to death” (Orosius. History against the pagan. Book V
chapter XV) I.
But let us speak first about the Celtic area: Celtica Litavia or “Celtic Area.”
Geographers and historians who have, the first, mentioned the Celts, where Greek: they
called them (in the plural in their language) Keltai or Galatai, and besides they often confused
these two names, undoubtedly interchangeable in their mind.
! --- ------------------- --------------------- !
Northern Europe.
Veneti deserve a particular mention, because several other people had the same name, or
almost.Some Uenedi (in Latin) live on the shore of the Baltic Sea, in Pomerania. It is not
known if they were easily or not Germanized, and they seem to have contributed to the
formation of the Vandal people thereafter. They also seem to have left to their Germanic
neighbors the memory of peoples very different from them, because, later, the word Wenden
designated, in Germania, various peoples as the Slavic Sorbs in Lusatia, even the
Slovenians.Veneti, in current Italian Venezia, and also in other regions. What is certain, on
the other hand, from the point of view of linguistics, it is that the Veneti of Venezia were
Illyrian people, and that those of Armorica were Celtic speaking people, just like those of
Gwynedd in Wales (Venedoti).Then, pure homonymy or identity? The question remains
asked.On their subject some specialists put forth the following assumption: Veneti, a people
of Indo-European language, were located towards the end of the third thousand years and the
beginning of the second thousand years before our era, approximately in the vicinity of
current Poland. At that time, the dialects which were going to give rise to the future Celtic,
Italic, Germanic and Slavic, languages, were to be still largely inter comprehensible. Part of
these Veneti had to follow the Celts towards west, for finally being completely Celtized,
whereas others were led towards the south in the wake of the Italic people, under linguistic
influence of whom they will be. Lastly, some remained on the spot, where they were probably
little by little, before undergoing the pressure of the Slavs, with whom they will end up being
melted (in the fifth century).
Poland.Celts, in the fourth century before our era, spread themselves in almost whole Europe
and particularly also in the south of current Poland, in Low Silesia, where the Sleza Mount
was their holy mountain, the plateau of Glubczyce, the basin of the upper San River (far
south-east of Poland), a mixed group more in north in the Western part of the Lesser Poland
(Maopolska). In this last area, after a short period of development of the “pure” Celtic
civilization, a group of a particular culture is formed, linking features of the civilization of La
Tene and those of the local civilization known as Przeworsk. Celts are also signaled more to
the north, in Kujawy (Kruszwica), where they exploited salty springs.
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Celts in Low Silesia.It is from this area that the oldest objects (La Tene B1) come, we can
ascribe to a true Celtic colonization . Celtic settlement was limited to the most fertile grounds
on the left bank of the Oder, between Olawa and Bystrzyca, up to Sleza Mount. We know
more than thirty necropolises and some housing on these territories.
On the slopes of Sleza Mount and in its surroundings are found quite strange sculptures.
They are anthropomorphic and zoomorphic representations as well as carved posts.
Dimensions of the statues as well as a local source of the stones which were used for their
manufacture, make it possible to locate their origin in the area of Sleza. Some have analogy
neither in Slavic art, nor in Germanic, medieval or later, art, but show resemblance with Celtic
art.The observation firstly concerns two statues of high size (between two and three meters)
known respectively as “Bear” and “Wild Boar.”According to some researchers, a statue
representing a character holding a fish (resembling a trout or a salmon) would be related to
the Celtic world. However, in this precise case, the resemblance that they evoke with the
sculpture of Euffigneix is much less striking and representations of fish are rather rare in
Celtic art.
Celtic enclave of Glubczyce plateau.Another Celtic enclave on the territory of current Poland
is located on the Plateau of Glubczyce, and that undoubtedly from the fourth century before
our era. Oldest graves, very few, are dated from the end of La Tene B1. The largest
concentration of Celtic graves on Glubczyce Plateau is in a large cemetery, pertaining to
several cultures, in Kietrz. It is a necropolis formed of more than 3.600 graves, of which most
part dates back to the Bronze Age and the first Iron Age. Burial Celtic graves form, in this
cemetery, a clearly discernible grouping, whereas cremation graves are dispersed within
those that are contemporaries of the Lusatian civilization. Marek Gedl who studied Kietrz
necropolis supposes that in the cremation graves natives, who had been in touch with Celtic
civilization, were buried.Inventory of Celtic graves includes ceramics, weapons, ornaments,
etc. In some graves, remainders of animals, and sometimes also hazel nuts, were identified.
Most recent graves in Kietrz are dated back to the stage of La Tene C1, but that does not
mean the end of the Celtic settlement in the area.
Celts in the Upper basin of the San River (Polish-Ukrainian border).The upper basin of the
San River forms another enclave of Celtic settlement in current Poland. Celts occupied these
lands at the beginning of La Tene C and they remained there until the end of Middle La Tene,
or perhaps even until La Tene D1. Specialists consider that Celtic materials in this area show
influences coming from the other side of the Carpathians , from the basin of the Tisza river in
eastern Slovakia and in Ukraine.
In other Celtic enclaves as well as in the basin of the river San, farming and breeding are the
main economic resources, but we cannot exclude that exploitation of salty springs in the San
Valley did not contribute to the settlement of the Celts.
Lesser Poland: the mixed group of Tyniec.In the fertile lands of the neighborhoods of Cracow,
Celts were in relation with a population of indigenous civilization , known as “Przeworsk,” and
they created a mixed cultural group. In the group some elements of two cultures coexisted,
but the part of the indigenous materials increases in the different stages. Considering the
mixed nature of the discoveries coming from these territories in Lesser Poland, specialists
use the name “group of Tyniec,” which refers to the first housing studied on an important
scale.As already mentioned, the development of the “Tyniec group” is preceded by a “pure”
Celtic civilization stage , dating back to La Tene B2. Are also included in it the burial graves
of Iwanowice which, however, are morerecent. The discoveries related to the “group of
Tyniec” contain almost only objects coming from housings. We can therefore estimate that the
people of the “Tyniec group” preserved a Celtic funerary rite which, from La Tene C2, takes
shapes imperceptible by our research methods.
N.B. It is admitted that the decline of the settlement of “pure” Celtic civilization in Poland
dates back La Tene C (in Silesia) or from the beginning of La Tene D (in the basin of the San
River). Last traces related to the Celts in Poland (“group of Tyniec”) disappear at the
beginning of the first century.
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In the rest of the currently Polish territory, there were also some other Celtic-speaking
peoples more or less scattered, such Lemovii. But do we must believe Tacitus who writes that
Aestii/Estyans spoke Breton???
Lugii, Lugi, Lygii, Ligii, Lugiones, Lygians, Ligians, Lugians, or Lougoi, formed an Indo-
European tribe with disputed nationality: Celtic, Germanic, Slavic, or mixed?They lived circa -
400 - 300 somewhere in Central Europe, in the north of the Sudetes Mountains, in the upper
basin of the Oder and of the Vistula River. In other words, the South and the Center of current
Poland (Silesia, Mazovia, Greater Poland and Lesser Poland, in Cracow formerly
Carrodunum), East of Slovakia, and Subcarpathian Ruthenia (spring of the Dniester and of
the Tisza river). What matches the civilization known as Przeworsk. Their wealth was linked
to the amber transport.Ptolemy, tells us that these peoples were made up of three distinct
groups.
- Lugii Diduni, a tribe of Asciburgius Mountains.
- Lugii Omani, a tribe close to Bourgountas (Burgondes) and Lugii Diduni of Asciburgius
Mountains.
- Lugii Buri, a tribe close to the springs of the Vistula.The subdivisions described by Ptolemy
differ from those which are given by Tacitus on the origin and situation of the Germanics
(chapter XLIII). “The name of Lugii, spread as it is in many states, is the most widely
extended. It will be enough to mention the most powerful, which are the Harii, the
Helvecones, the Manimi, the Helisii and the Nahanarvali. Among these last is shown a grove
of immemorial sanctity. A priest wearing a dress as a woman [in Latin sacerdos muliebri
ornatu: a druid?] has the charge of it. But the deities are honored in Roman interpretation as
Castor and Pollux. The force attached to the divine entity bears the name of Alcis [elk?]. They
have no images, or, indeed, any vestige of a superstition which would be of foreign origin, but
it is as brothers and as youths that the deities are worshiped.”
N.B. These names appear in majority Germanic.
According to Strabo (Geography, book VII, chapter I, 3). These subdivisions of Lugians still
differ.
3…”Here, too, is the Hercynian Forest, and also the tribes of the Suevi, some of which dwell
inside the forest, as, for instance, the tribe of the Quadi [Greek Koldouoi], and here also is
Bohemia [Greek Bouíaimon] the domain of Marabodus, the place whither he caused to
migrate, not only several other peoples, but in particular the Marcomanni, his fellow
tribesmen; for after his return from Rome this man, who before had been only a private
citizen, was placed in charge of the affairs of state. As a youth he had been at Rome and had
enjoyed the favor of Augustus, so on his return he took the ruler ship and acquired, in addition
to the peoples aforementioned, the Lugii (a large tribe), the Zoumous (Diduni), the Butones,
the Mougilonas (Lugi Manes), the Sibinousi, and also the Semnones, a large tribe, section of
the Suevi themselves”…
This people (more particularly the Lugii Buri) was, according to Tacitus near to Suevi through
his way of life and his language, what would make it a Germanized people.
Tacitus on the origin and situation of the Germanics (chapter XLIII): “Behind them the
Marsigni, Cotini, Osi, and Buri, close in the rear of the Marcomanni and Quadi. Of these, the
Marsigni and Buri, in their language and manner of life, resemble the Suevi. The Cotini and
Osi are proven by their respective Celtic and Pannonian languages, as well as by the fact of
their enduring tribute, not to be Germanics. Tribute is imposed on them as aliens, partly by
the Sarmatæ, partly by the Quadi. The Cotini, to complete their degradation, actually work
iron mines. All these nations occupy but little of the plain country, dwelling in forests and on
mountaintops. For Suevia is divided and cut in half by a continuous mountain range, beyond
which live a multitude of tribes.”
In year 20, the Lugii, become allies of the Hermundurs, attacked the king of the Quadi,
Vannius, driven away from his throne. This king was an ally of the Romans and of the
Sarmatians. Palpellius Hister, governor of Pannonia, therefore decided to protect the banks of
the Danube in order to block the invaders.
Tacitus, Annals, book XII.
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Chapter XXIX.
.For an immense host of Lugii, with other tribes, was advancing, attracted by the fame of the
opulent realm which Vannius had enriched during thirty years of plunder and of tribute.
Vannius's own native force was infantry, and his cavalry was from the Iazyges of Sarmatia; an
army which was no match for his numerous enemies. Consequently, he determined to
maintain himself in fortified positions, and protract the war.
Chapter XXX.
But the Iazyges, who could not endure a siege, dispersed themselves throughout the
surrounding country and rendered an engagement inevitable, as the Lugii and Hermunduri
had there rushed to the attack. So Vannius came down out of his fortresses, and though he
was defeated in battle, notwithstanding his reverse, he won some credit by having fought with
his own hand, and received wounds, on his breast. He then fled to the fleet which was
awaiting him on the Danube, and was soon followed by his liege men, who received grants of
land and were settled in Patagonian. Vangio and Sido divided his kingdom between them;
they were admirably loyal to us; and among their subjects, whether the cause was in
themselves or in the nature of despotism, much loved, while seeking to acquire power, and
yet more hated when they had acquired it.
N.B. A tribe of the same name, Lugi, is pointed out in the North-East of Scotland, in the
western part of Sutherland.
Ukraine.
Boïkos form a distinct group of peoples living in the far west of Ukraine. There were some of
them up to Dolynskyi area in the center of Ukraine and to the province of Lvov, as in the
adjacent areas of South-East Poland and North-East Slovakia. Various historical sources, and
particularly those dating back to the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenete, tend to
make these Boikos some descendants of the Celtic tribe of Boians (in Greek Boiki).As we
saw higher, in Galicia, a semi-Ukrainian, semi-Polish region in the north of the Carpathian
Mountains, there were also some scattered Celtic communities, like the Osi or the Cotini.
Who therefore spoke still a Celtic language at the time and that, on Tacitus own admission.
The name of “Galicia“ does not have, on the other hand, something to do with this presence,
since it comes from the chancellery Latin Galicia, which designated in the beginning the
Palatinate of Polish Halicz (Ukrainian Galic). On this same territory, we also notice the
presence of a borough called Carrodunon, currently Zalescycki, which perhaps belonged to
the Racatai (“vanguard “) and farther to the east of Anarti and Teurisci.
There were Celtic settlements on the Low-Danube in the lower Moesia (Arrubium, Aliobrix
and Noviodunum, origin of current Isacea); probably coming from the Celtic tribe of the
Britolagi that experts point out between the Danube and the Dnieper River, therefore in
Bessarabian and Transnistrian Ukraine. We find indeed in the historical documentation
regarding the region some locality names: Maetonium, Vibantivarium, Eractum and
Carrodunum their chief town (on the middle course of the Dniester River or perhaps towards
Olbia of the Euxine Pontus.
A decree written on a marble flagstone at the end of the third century before our era (the large
inscription of Olbia) mentions this Milesian settlement was a time (circa - 220 - 221)
threatened by the Celts and the Sciri. Olbia was a Black Sea port built on the shore of the
Southern Bug Estuary (today Parutino of Otchakiv, 60 km to the east of Odessa, in Ukraine).
Some authors think that the Celts in question were those of the kingdom of Tylis in Thrace.
Others were Celts having survived the collapse of this kingdom. Others finally think of
Bastarnae.
The birth of an alliance between the Celts and Sciri in the region had indeed much worried the
inhabitants of Olbia. They had heard that this alliance was to lead during the next winter, in
the attack on the city by the river (then frozen in this season) and had decided to be
organized in order to achieve the building of the defense lines of the city. But only a person
by the name Protogenes had agreed to take part in the financing of this rampart, hence the
decree.
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Face B, 18: “And whereas several generous givers had fallen short of their duty, Protogenes
took it upon him to complete work for the city, but caused no loss for the people, having spent
for the two walls 1500 gold staters and paid off the greatest part out of gold, he was refunded
out of bronze for 400 staters.”
Let us reconsider the particular case of the Bastarnae settled in Danube’s estuary, people
semi-Germanic semi-Celtic or perhaps, like Cimbri and Teutons, Celtized Germanics.
Polybius and Plutarch give them for Galatians but Livy is the only author to give some
admissible arguments to compare Bastarnae to Celts. Indeed, he indicates to us that
Bastarnae share with Scordisci an almost similar language and the same habits.
The Peucini formed a part of Bastarnae and they were settled from the Danube’s estuary to
the Dniester River. Cf. Strabo (book VII, chapter III, 17). According to Pliny (Natural History.
Book IV, XIV, 100), Peucini and Bastarnae formed the fifth of the most important Germanic
groups. Bastarnae are the first “Germanic” people to be involved in conflicts with peoples of
the Mediterranean. It is possible that they are famous Celts evoked by the great inscription of
Olbia circa - 220. We find them again one half-century later with Philip V of Macedon and
Perseus against the Romans and Dardani. Cf. Livy (book XL, chapters, V, X; LVII-LVIII).
Mithridates also sought their alliance. They were defeated by Marcus Licinius Crassus. They
were equated alternatively with Celts or with Scythians. Strabo (book VII, chapter III, 17) is
the first to equate them, in a not very sure way, with the Germanic ones.
There was also a “Gallaikè Khôrè” “or “Gallic” country, in Thrace, in the south-east of current
Bulgaria. It is the mysterious kingdom of Tylis of which the main town was undoubtedly
towards Mezek. Making the most of the decline of the kingdoms resulting from the
disintegration of Alexander’s empire, they made incursions in Greece itself, and then they
founded a group of federated principalities, in the middle of Anatolia, Galatia or Galatiia.
Approximately current Turkish provinces of Ankara, Cankiri and Corum, between the
Sangarios/Sakarya River and the Halys/Kizil-Irmak River;
Bohemia-Moravia and Slovakia, Hungary west of the Tisza River, North of Serbia and North-
East of Croatia (Slavonia) as well as Austria, belonged to this Celtica Litavia or Celticum; who
also stretched over in North Italy from the Apennines (except Venezia and the Rhetic
mountains of Friuli) to Senigallia on the Adriatic coast.
France, except Corsica and the Iberian speaking zones of Aquitaine, also formed part of this
compact unit, with, however, a certain Ligurian distinctive identity in Provence, in Liguria
obviously, and in the south of Piedmont.
As regards Iberian Peninsula, most of the Atlantic Coast also formed part of this unit:
Portugal, Galicia, Leon, Asturias, Castile and also Extremadura; with some Celtic relays in
Euzkady (Basque Country) and also some isolated small zones in Catalonia.
N.B. British Isles were also completely Celtic or Celtized at the same time, of course.
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MARCHES BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES OF THE CELTIC EMPIRE
(LETAVIA CELTICA) CONTINUATION.
There were, of course, in the Celtica Litavia then, still not Celtized indigenous recesses. Vast
Illyrian speaking isolated zones, dominated, but not completely become assimilated,
remained then in Pannonia (Hungary south of the Danube). Another example: the Aquitanian
peoples in the south-west of France. The current Gascon area (but there were Celtic
encroachments in the Comminges and in the Couserans, on the one hand, and in the Medoc
or in the Buch country on the other hand). Part of the current Euzkady (the Basque Country)
was then Celtic speaking, so astonishing it can appear. This zone was ”reconquered“ by the
Basque language only much later. It was then called “Vascongada” by the Spaniards.
South of the Pyrenees, after this maximum extension, the Celtica Litavia or Celticum was
parceled out under the influence of the Iberian renewal. The Celticity was reduced gradually
to Galicia, North of Portugal, certain parts of Leon, Asturias and Cantabria; and two zones
matching currently, one New Castile, the other the surroundings of the low Guadiana River,
not far from Tartessus (legendary biblical Tarshish). As various isolated small residual zones
in the East or the Center-South of the peninsula.
Teutons and Cimbri.
Around 500 before our era, the prosperous days of the Bronze Age, which was the greatest
period of Scandinavian prehistory, arrived at their end. This time was that when the
Scandinavian goldsmiths were the unchallenged masters of all Europe in the work of bronze
and gold; when the Scandinavian sailors and boats traveled all over the northern seas, and
when the mortal remains of the Scandinavian rich persons were buried in the middle of their
treasures; in enormous funerary mounds.What were the causes of the decline of this
splendor? A new climatic variation; a cold phase replaced the hot period, which therefore
deteriorated radically the characteristics of the Scandinavian environment. Moreover, the
introduction of the iron metallurgy into North, disorganized the economy based on bronze,
while the Celts who imposed their domination on the Central Europe, cut its trade routes
towards the South.The changes caused by these social and climatic changes appeared
initially through an evolution which, perhaps, was almost unperceived. Around the end of the
Bronze Age (between 900 and 500 before our era), the number of buildings of large-sized
funerary mounds decreased, a phenomenon which betrays a certain dumbing down of the
social classes. Little by little, the use of cremation was spread. Bones and ashes were buried
in small round pits whose site was marked by flagstones or by a stone circle, modest burials
which were quickly covered by vegetation and just as quickly forgotten by the living. They are
the tombs called “cist graves” by archaeologists.The rather slow evolution whereby a form of
burial replaced the other, dismisses the assumption according to which immigrants would
have introduced other customs, new. Moreover, the cremation constituted already a form of
funeral during the old Bronze Age. But definitive adoption of cremation, as regular practice,
represented the evolution of collective beliefs concerning life and survival, the transition,
perhaps, from a materialist idea towards a spiritualistic design, of the world of the deceased.
The soul/mind of late was to go up towards the skies, carried away by the flames of the
funeral pyre. A religion of this type can explain the presence, in a funeral urn at the end of the
early Bronze Age, of three pairs of wings of a rook and of a pair of wings of a carrion crow,
which are, as each one knows, death-omen birds. The wings could be left in the grave to help
the soul/mind of the dead in its trip towards the heavens.The decline of bronze work is
another sign that times change. As the cremation use spreads, the demand for precious
funerary ornament decreases. The weapons and the swords are from now on out of iron, a
more resistant metal. Whoever had iron, had the means of dominating those who were
deprived of it.The Scandinavians could not at the beginning rival the Celts, and the latter ones
continued to provide models to the northern smiths, until the beginning of the Christian
era.But the appearance of iron was not the only event which destroyed the Scandinavian
society of Bronze Age. The decisive blow seems to be dealt by the Celts themselves who
invaded Central Europe and thus disrupt the exchange networks, several thousand-year-old,
linking Scandinavia to the Mediterranean. The roads of amber trade, for example, so
profitable, moved from Denmark to Eastern banks of the Baltic. Getting round the Celtic
empire, amber was now transported towards the south, along the Vistula and the Dnieper
River, to the Black Sea and, from there, in the direction of the Aegean Sea. Thus,
Scandinavia was suddenly cut off from its thousand-year-old relations with the Mediterranean
world.In the meantime, it seems that a new social order was established in the Scandinavian
147
areas. The metal workers for example, continued to hold in the hierarchy of the Iron Age, a
favored place. But, generally, the new way of life of the Northern people enabled no longer,
from now on, the clear distinctions between social classes which marked the Bronze Age.
Henceforth, everyone was to put the shoulder to the wheel and everything indicates that the
individuals were forced to work harder than ever (they would say today “to work more in
order to earn less”). To cultivate land, to breed cattle, claimed the efforts of the whole people,
because the land itself, by exhaustion of soils and for other reasons, had become
impoverished.This turn of events, including the economic decline, was due to a sudden and
disastrous deterioration of the climate. The getting colder seems to have begun circa 500
before our era and coincides with the beginning of the Iron Age. It was apparently caused by
a deviation of the warm ocean currents, and a variation in the intensity of solar radiation. The
almost tropical climate, during the Bronze Age, became cold and wet. In the space of a few
centuries and perhaps of a few generations only, the summer became a season of wind, rain,
and fog, while the winter was plunged in darkness, snowstorms, and a rigorous cold.Even in
more moderated areas, the climate remained still too hard to enable an easy existence. It is
what results from the study of the vestiges of housings in the early Iron Age, discovered in
South Scandinavia. These solid houses and bad weather proof were intentionally built out of
stone as well as out of earth in Sweden and in Norway, in cob in Denmark. Because of the
become rigorous climate, it was necessary to build shelters for the cattle. From now on, the
cattle, the pigs, the horses, and the sheep, lived in a cattle shed, sometimes in the same
buildings as the human beings.The farmer of the Iron Age was to work relentlessly to supply
his cattle with fodder and to feed his family. The Iron Age was a period of tensions and of
ceaseless fights against gangs which attacked the herds and plundered the food stocks of the
other villages. At this point in time, the first wave of come from North invaders, Cimbri and
Teutons, began to overwhelm Western Europe and moved towards the south, beginning so
with Rome a historical fight. Such is life therefore! 2000 years or more ago, the immigrants
waves came from north, and they were tall fair-haired and blue-eyed people, today it is from
south or from the countries in the south that the hordes of unfortunate people in search of a
more hospitable land than the one which saw them being born, come. The first, the tall fair-
haired and blue-eyed people, ended up slaughtered or enslaved. What will occur to the
seconds, the small brown ones?? But let us return to our white sheep.
The tradition makes the Cimbrian people (Latin Cimbri) coming from Jutland, in current
Denmark, according to Pliny the elder. It is estimated that they were 60.000 to 80.000 and
that they lived in hundreds of villages scattered on the coasts of Northern Europe. If their
origins are prone to polemics, we could suppose them Celtic like the Ambrones, as well as
the Teutons, just like we could call them Germanic; it is, however, an extreme simplification of
their ethnogenesis.The Himmerland where the cauldron of Gundestrup was found could be
their area of origin; however, that does not match the description that Romans authors made
of it.
Their name is also close to the Germanic Kimme, which means “shore,” "edge.” But the
mutation rules of Germanic languages invalidate this assumption.The suicide of many women
at the time of their defeat facing Rome in 102 reminds the Germanic sacrifice of the Blat
and of the wife of Haraldskær, but their king had a Celtic name, Boiorix.
The writers of ancient Rome bring us some lights on these peoples. The harsh climate of their
homeland formed the resistance ability of Cimbri and Teutons, made them remarkable and
fearless warriors. They took their weapons everywhere, whatever their activities were.
However, the carrying a sword remained strictly controlled, like in some of our modern States.
To be armed, it was necessary to have proven, in front of the elder of the tribe, his aptitude for
using weapons.Consequently, the greatest honor in the life of a young “barbarian” was to
receive his first javelin, his first shield. This ceremony represented the equivalent of the virile
toga (toga virilis) for a young Roman.They were generous and very hospitable. Their marriage
code authorized only one wife. The women had some characteristics of the divinity even were
supposed to enjoy some divination faculties; the men did not scorn their opinion, what
surprised Tacitus. This author informs us also that the dowry of the marriage was brought by
the man; this one was made out of cattle and out of one horse, provided with a saddle as well
as bridles, and perhaps out of shields, javelins or swords. As for the contribution brought by
the bride to her husband, it usually included weapons, symbolizing through that her will to
enter the home of the man and to share his trials and tribulations as well as the dangers.One
of the richest sites of the Iron Age is in Borremose marsh, in the North of the Jutland
peninsula. The Cimbrian city of Borremose could be reconstructed on the computer thanks to
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the results of the excavations: the farms were fortified by a ditch, an embankment as well as
by palisades. The archaeologists suppose that it was a royal residence. Nearby, in a peat
bog, were discovered in 1950 the corpses, of two women and of a man, remarkably well
preserved, so much so that one thought even for a moment their death was recent.In 1891,
already, “peat cutters” had discovered, close to Borremose marsh, one of the greatest hoards
of Antiquity; the Gundestrup silver cauldron decorated in relief with images of God-or-
demons, goddess-or-demonesses of fairies, animal fights and human sacrifices. The majority
of the specialists estimate that this cauldron is of Celtic craftsmanship, and that it was brought
back in the area, as a trophy, by tribes returning to their native country. Perhaps even by
Cimbrian warriors, the very people who had terrorized the Roman empire. It is believed that
Cimbri are natives of the Jutland area where the cauldron was found; they were perhaps even
cousins or neighbors of the people of Borremose.A number of the precise details that Tacitus
gives about northern villages were confirmed by the excavations due to modern
archaeologists. The houses were independent from each other, separated by open spaces, a
ground occupation completely unknown of the Latin villages of its time. It was a precaution
against the fires. The Northern people dug, moreover, cellars in the ground, some simple
holes which they covered with a heap of manure, but that they used, either as refuges in the
event of danger, or as stock rooms for the products.The houses were built according to a
lengthened rectangular plan. In the center of the huts, a double line of posts bore the roof.
The hearth was usually at the western end of the house, part occupied by human beings,
while the cattle, the horses, the sheep and the hens, were generally relegated to the other
end of the building.It is also known that furniture was made up of bowls and pottery vases, of
looms or of accessories for weaving as well as mill stones intended to crush grain. Moreover,
as a series of weight was found on the beaten earth floor of one of these houses, some think
that the fishing nets were to be hanged up on kinds of racks, along the walls.The
archaeologists discovered the place of the fields in which the farmers of the Iron Age
cultivated cereals or other food plants. The layout of these plots can be reconstituted thanks
to the stone heaps which were rejected on the edges of the field before the sowing. Or by the
small earth mounds formed, at the end of the furrows, by the reversal of the plowshare.During
the Iron Age, the men fulfilled sacrifices, like their ancestors for thousands years: they offered
swords, food, pottery or even some objects like the Gundestrup cauldron. But, more than ever
before, some human beings were also drowned in the marshes. These sacrifices represented
gratitude acts (thanksgiving) anticipating the favors to come: plentiful crop or victory in the
war. In other cases, they were compensatory gestures. The men and the women who had
offended the god-or-demons, or who had broken the common law, were left deep in the
marshes. Not only to calm the god-or-demons, but also as practical means to eliminate the
undesirable persons from the village.Tacitus described the rites of the worship of Nerthus,
goddess-or-demoness of earth, by the people which lived in Denmark. The residence of the
goddess-or-demoness, or the fairy if this term is preferred, was a sacred grove, in an island
located on the open sea; she went out from there accompanied by a solemn retinue at
certain times of the year, but he does not tell us exactly when and how. The goddess-or-
demoness, or fairy if it is preferred, traveled in a wagon covered with a veil that only a priest
(a druid?) could touch. Then feast days and celebrations in each place she condescended to
visit, began… The war stopped, each one laid down his arms, and all the iron objects were
kept away. Then, only, and for a short period of time, peace and quiet prevailed, the harmony
was general; until goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, tired of the company of human
beings, is brought back by a druid in his sanctuary island. At this time, the wagon, the
clothing, and the goddess-or-demoness or fairy herself, were plunged into the bottom of a
lake, then the men who had accomplished this holy task were immediately drowned. Thus,
the Roman historian concludes, the mystery always generates terror, and the dagolitoi (the
faithful ones) do not dare to ask questions about a sight that only the men intended to die will
contemplate.It is almost certain that the role of the celebrant and servant of the goddess-or-
demoness, or of the fairy if this term is preferred, was reserved for the leading figures of the
marsh people, particularly to the one who was designated by the name of Tollund man
(Central Jutland). He was naked, with the exception of a leather hat which covered his head,
of a leather belt around his waist, and of a leather rope tightened around his neck;
undoubtedly the lace with which he had been hanged or strangled. He was lying in squatted
position, huddled up, his legs under him and his arms folded, resting on the side as if he was
sleeping. Because of his hands, which were not those of a manual worker, experts think he
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was a druid or a village chief. Because people chose sometimes, as victims of sacrifices,
some individuals of high social status, in the hope that the late would continue to make the
village enjoying his particular powers. The autopsy revealed that he had eaten a special
meal, 12 to 24 hours before dying: a kind of gruel containing cereals and grains, ones of wild
origin, others farmed.These same seeds were to germinate, to grow then to ripen during the
trip of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, through the spring landscape. From
these indications specialists deduce that the Tollund man was perhaps one of the druids who
guided or accompanied the goddess-or-demoness or fairy during the festivals of the spring
sowing. After having escorted the sacrosanct wagon, and having taken the ritual meal, he
played his part until the end and was sacrificed so that the earth can make a new life gush
out.
Illyrians.
Illyrians are a protohistoric people in the Balkans, of Indo-European origin, related to
Thracians and Dacians (Thracian-Illyrians). Their language, the Illyrian, is known to us only
through traces left in the onomastics in the area, particularly in toponymy.The Thracian-Illyrian
group was in permanent touch with Celts: there were therefore constantly alternations of
symbiosis and conflicts between the two. There were mixed and probably bilingual
populations besides, like Scordisci or part of Veneti.Illyrians were a vast group, potentially as
important as that of the Celts, but culturally more parceled out, whereas their Celtic-speaking
neighbors too, had a moral and linguistic cohesion firmly maintained by the high knowers of
the druidiaction (druidecht). Between the two groups, there was a dispute, because the Celts,
more still than the Germanic ones, had supplanted Illyrians in their initial cradle. They were
also Celts who had wrecked the establishment of the Rasenas/Etruscans in north Italy, and
still some Celts who, then, had sought to spread along the coasts of the Adriatic. Certain
solidarity against the Roman imperialism could, of course, have reconciled them, but Rome
always had the skill to attack them separately.With the Germanic ones, it turned out
differently. The Celts had been, and continued to be, a model, for them; it is shown by many
archeological or linguistic facts. The Germanic nobility had readily Celtic names, and during
several great warlike expeditions, particularly that of Cimbri and Teutons, the two ethnic
groups were also represented by important contingents close to each other. It is only around
the end of the La Tene time that the Germanic ones became bolder at the point to occupy
territories partially evacuated by the Celts left to colonize sunnier regions.Compared to the
time of Hallstatt, the Celticity thus was already drawing back, in favor of the Germanic ones,
in the Center and North of Germany as in the East of the Netherlands.
At the time of the La Tene period, the Germanic progression developed, while reaching the
Rhine then the banks of the Bavarian Danube. It then took on Bohemia-Moravia and drove
Boians from it.
Ligurians.
It is important here to reconsider the case of the Ligurians, whose exact ethnic position is still
discussed. The ones make them Celts among others, a vanguard in a way in their expansion
towards the west and the south. Others make them cousins of Thracian-Illyrians.Others
finally, fewer since bits of Ligurian toponymy are studied, make them non-Indo-Europeans,
almost some Cro-Magnon people. Where is the truth? As all is complex in ethnology, there is
truth in each one of these three assumptions.Everyone today agrees roughly that their
language was intermediate between the Celtic and the Illyrian language, and at one time
when these two languages themselves were relatively close, that goes almost without
saying.The Ligurian seems to be close to the Celtic language, up to become identified with it
like in the case of the Lepontic language, which is regarded now as a “subalpine” Celtic
dialect (cf. Benvenuto Terracini).It is known, on the other hand, that in the late La Tene
language, mutual comprehension still existed between the Celtic Ambrones and the Ligurians,
and that they were regarded as consanguineous (memory of yesteryear common warlike
adventures). The study of toponymy as well as botanical words shows nevertheless that
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there was incorporation of pre-Indo-European vocabulary. It is therefore a Neolithic substrate,
Indo-Europeanized, but predominant in the physical type as well as in the customs and habits
of these people become settlers, devoted to agriculture, but without neglecting other
activities.At the Hallstattian time, the Ligurians undoubtedly occupied all future Gaul, as well
as some parts of the North-West of Spain and of the West of North Italy. They were gradually
conquered by the Celts themselves , on the one hand, and to a lesser extent by Iberians,
along the Gulf of Genoa (ligusticus sinus = Ligurian Gulf) as well as in Aquitaine.The
Ligurians also contributed to the peopling of Corsica and Sardinia, in which they were in turn
invaded by the Shardanes, cousins of Lydians and Tyrrhenians (another Illyric group). They
also took part in the peopling of Sicily since experts regard Sicules/Shekelesh as Ligurians;
hence besides the name of this island: Siculia, Sicilia.To supplement this short review, it
remains us to speak about the Italic people since some specialists put forwards the
assumption of an Italic-Celtic phase.It is with the Italic language that the Celtic one had most
relationships. The initial Italic is not attested; on the other hand, we know several of the
languages which are derived from it. We know, rather well, the Umbrian and the Osque
language, and we also know Latin. The language nearest Celtic language, so much so that it
was even regarded as an intermediate language between Celtic and Italic, was the Umbrian.
Umbri occupied a rather restricted area, even negligible compared to the huge Celtic Litavia:
approximately the current area of Umbria, increased with a frontage on the Adriatic, from the
Esino River to the Rubicon River, therefore; plus the totality of the province of Pesaro, half of
that of Forli, four fifths of that of Ancona and the Republic of San Marino. The Senones Celts
invaded this coastline besides and superimposed themselves temporarily, on Umbri, in itThe
last come into Italy, the Umbri had also, perhaps (this point is much questioned), other
settlements elsewhere (see the Umbranici of Southerner Gaul: approximately the district of
Lodeve, French department of Herault.The other Italic people were the Latins, and, more
numerous, the Sabellians, who included Osci, Sabines, Samnites, and Hirpini, some peoples
in touch with the Illyrian nations occupying the coastline of the Adriatic. Among the Italic
peoples, as among Celts, we noted the dichotomy between P and Qu: the Osque “pis”
matched the Latin “quis,” etc. Between Celts and Italics, many of communal verb stems, as
well as rather parallel declensions and conjugations. The exchanges of vocabulary, by mutual
borrowing or maintaining of a linguistic pool, were numerous, but not at the point to still carry
out a mutual comprehension at La Tene time.The big problem of the non-Latin Italic peoples
was Rome imperialism, which led them therefore repeatedly to call upon the Celts. But it is
known that Rome ended up succeeding in imposing its power on the entire Italian boot. It was
now done before the First Punic War breaks out, circa 270. The Celts helped as much as
they could do the Carthaginians at the time of the Second Punic War (- 217 to - 200).
Victorious after having come very close to collapse, the Romans therefore undertook at once
to subject them (- 200 to - 189).The last paroxysm of the Italic peoples united to the Etruscans
and the Illyrians was the war known as “social” (from socii = federate). A fight for the national
independence waged from 90 until - 88, and from which Rome was left only while granting
citizenship to all the peninsular ones of free status.
CELTIC CIVILIZATION.
It is at the end of the fourth century before our era that appears, always in the Greek sources,
the term “Galatians“ to precisely designate the Celts who run up against the Greeks from
310 (invasions led among others by a chief by the name Molistomos). They cross, not without
leaving traces, the Balkans, and reach Asia close to Byzantium. The context in which this
name is used lets us think that the concerned persons named themselves so.Nearly two
centuries and half after, Julius Caesar mentions the Gauls, who name themselves Celts in
their language, and who live in a part of Gaul (the two other parts being peopled with Aquitani
and Belgians).Common point of these three accounts, which besides reflect different realities
or intentions, the existence of Celts is witnessed during these centuries which, from
Herodotus until Caesar, form what archaeologists named “civilization of La Tene.”According
to the site of La Tene, on the Thielle River, in Switzerland.To this Celtic empire (Celtica
Litavia or Celticum in Livy) attested by the historical sources, it is, of course, necessary to add
Great Britain, also conquered shortly after by the Romans, and of which Caesar mentioned
the uniqueness compared to Gaul. To it also Ireland should be added, finally, from the Iron
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Age until the Early Middle Ages, such as archaeology and tradition reveal it, or the insular
texts of this last period.
The Celtic world does not have a political unity, it is not a political empire having for example
as king of kings (ard ri) Ambicatus, but we can speak about a Celtic civilization: the same way
of life and of thought, the same religious practices, the same language. By “same language”
we want to say possible mutual comprehension between the various dialects perhaps with a
few efforts (as between the different varieties of our language according to whether it is
spoken in America in Europe in Africa and so on).Each tribe-state has a hill fort which it used
as capital. The oppidum which is the Celtic town (a large borough for us) is a fortified place.
Generally, the place was already occupied by the native tribes, and the rampart is already
built. Even if the Celts renovated it or fortified it. We find as well the height oppidum as the
river oppidum. Water protects as well as the heights. Inside the wall, we find a large non-built
public square, surrounded by a palisade, in order to receive there in it the farmers of the
villages around in the event of conflict. At the top is the market space or the fanum (the shrine
marked by a round or square tower: the cella). Downwards, we find the district of craftsmen,
sometimes also a district for the stock breeders and one for the farmers. In the Acy-Romance
site in France, the districts in question were thus made up: three large yards of one hectare.
The stock breeders are in the north-eastern district, the farmers in the east and the craftsmen
in the south-east. This organization is not a coincidence, it meets functional imperatives. The
stock breeders for example, will be less than 500 m of the river and of the meadows, the
craftsmen down the prevailing west winds in order to avoid the propagation of fires to the
whole village. Farmers, millers, but also weavers, are between the two. Important labor
necessary for agriculture and gardening will be confined in a central district made up of
aligned buildings on each side of small streets.The housing districts are divided into plots, of
equal surface, delimited by fences. In each one the house and various additional buildings,
barns, granaries, lean-tos, stand… The religious person in charge of the village, the high
knowers of the druidiaction living in a rather vast house near the shrine (fanum), uses like the
other people secondary buildings which show his position at the top of the hierarchy.The
houses with squared timber framework, with thatched roofs and whitewashed cob walls, look
fine and foreshadow the traditional half-timbered housing. In the noble residences, there is a
floor or, at the very least, a complete granary with floor . In the hearth terra cotta ram-headed
fire dogs or andirons (it is a word of Celtic origin besides: andero) have pride of place and on
shelves or low tables, quality vases pile up. It is not the same thing for the dwelling of the farm
laborers endowed with a more Spartan comfort: a simple layer of clay on the ground is used
as a basis for the hearth.But everyone does not live in hill forts. We also find many isolated
housing as well as hamlets. Caesar mentions indeed at the same time aedificia, isolated
agricultural buildings, and some vici, which are a grouping of aedificia. The leaders also live in
aedificia, generally located, Caesar tells us, in a glade of the forest or on the bank of a river.
Beside farming and breeding, hunting and fishing must be their favorite leisure.These
aedificia, as well besides as the dwellings of the vici, are branches huts coated with clay or
houses with frames. “As for their houses,” Strabo writes, “which are large and dome-shaped,
they make them of planks and wicker, throwing up over them quantities of thatch.”The Celts
indeed know neither the tile nor the mortar. The base of these dwellings is often
strengthened with low walls out of dry stone, in which are fixed posts which hold the walls and
bear the roof structure.An excellent reconstruction of a Celtic village (even with the kind of
totems that the Romans called “simulacra,” that is to say a still in place and well-rooted tree
trunks but cut at the middle height and coarsely carved; was made by the Germans (Altburg
bei Bundenbach).The construction of the dwelling varies naturally, according to the resources
of each area: in forest country, branches huts and cabins with frames; in rocky ground, dry
stone huts, even when wood does not lack in the surroundings. These shacks group inside a
courtyard, surrounded itself with a dry stone wall.In these more or less vast and with a more
or less carefully built construction, dwellings, people live without pieces of furniture. The floor
is made of beaten earth covered with straw. The house of a chief [rural owner] must group
around it, in a vast courtyard, perhaps even in a small enclosure similar to a fortress, the
shacks of his servants, of his squires, and of some of the men in his debt or of his liege men.
Not forgetting the cattle sheds or the stables, the barns and the other supply stocks. Common
people too, on the other hand, were often to share their dwelling with their cattle.The dwelling
houses of the cities were not to be very different from those that were located in the
countryside. Between the city and the hamlets, there is only the size which changes.Our
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ancestors can produce wool, dye it, spin it, and weave it, then to make clothing: breeches
(pants), tunics and jackets. The fibula (hooks) is of everyday usage. They eat many meats
(roasted on ember or with a spit, and boiled), that which come from their stockers, pigs,
sheep, goats, oxen, horses, hens, and dogs. This meat can be consumed fresh or after
conservation (salting: we have found workshops of salt boilers). They also eat river fish:
pikes, barbells, chubs, trouts, perches… As regards cereals, they consume wheat or barley,
which they eat mushy. They make of them also round flat bread. It seems that they made
bread only at the end of the Iron Age with the farming of wheat and of spelt. They eat lentils
and peas. For the fruits, they gather wild bays, raspberries, strawberries, hazel nuts
They are good farmers who practice the manure (lime, marl, manure sometimes mixed with
ashes, liquid manure). Certain tribes use even wheeled plows more effective than swing
plows. They cultivate wheat, barley, rye, and millet, as we said, but for this purpose often
adopt agriculture with “open fields.” i.e., they divide their land into three zones in order to
practice the three-year rotation. The first zone if it is sown out with wheat corn or rye (cereals
which exhaust the richness of the soil) the first year is left in fallow the second year, and then
receives some vegetables the third one. The two other zones turn likewise, but in order to
bear every year vegetable and grain crops as well as a zone in fallow. This system requires
that the farmers cultivate jointly, and receive their share of the harvest at the end of the
season . The chief saves the lion’s share for himself, of course. As already pointed out
previously, they are also great stock breeders, they support pigs to consume their meat (on
the other hand, they eat very few wild boars). They can preserve the meat by salting it or
smoking it and are excellent pork butchers. Fresh-water fishing provides a supplement of
food.They are also good craftsmen who master the use of iron, from mining to handcrafted
iron and steel industry. They work in bronze, gold, silver, enamel, and also leather, not
forgetting wood. They make four wheeled wagons, invent the vallus (a mechanical reaper),
and build robust ships. They are also the inventors of the barrel, lighter but also more
practical than the amphoras, and of the soap (by mixing grease and soda).If the Celtic tribe is
self-sufficient, it practices nevertheless the trade with its peers. If many vicus are located near
the waterways and the rivers, it is not only to practice fishing, but also because they are
means of communication which make it possible to move goods and men. On the banks of
the waterways and of the rivers, we find therefore trading posts and river ports.
The country is also crisscrossed with paths which link together the main towns of the various
tribes, and which carry out the link with the different vicus. The Celts also trade with foreign
peoples. They receive very early from Greece some ceramic vases as well as bronze vases
like the stamnoi or œnochoai.The wine too comes from Greece. The Greek products take two
ways, one continental and the other maritime one to the port of Massalia (Greek name of the
town of Marseilles at that time, which will become Massilia under Caesar). But much more
tardily as regards this second way, about the second century before our era. These men also
trade with Great Britain, with the people of the north of Spain, with the Germanic tribes, and
also with Italy and Rome. The Celts are not unknown persons for the Romans. The trad
development made it possible that of coins, but rather tardily, at the beginning of the third
century before our era. They are the Greeks in Massalia who minted the first some coins then
have introduced them into the Celtic country from the fourth century before our era.
Previously, our ancestors used foreign coins. The Celts of the Center and of the North as for
them will mint gold coins similar to “Philipi,” of the name of Philip II of Macedon (- 382 - 336),
some coins (gold staters) which circulate in all the Mediterranean countries and also among
the tribes known as “barbarian“.The Celtic society consists of a warlike aristocracy, warriors
having a horse and an iron sword solider and handier than that in bronze.Every year, the
aristocracy elects its chief, and the armies waging war elect their general. The chief who is
thus chosen owes generally his election to his obligors or vassals. A system which resembles
enough of the feudal system, in which more the man is powerful more he has men who are
his subjects, whom he protects (theoretically) and who in exchange serve him. It is therefore
not only money which matters as nowadays. It is the importance of the number of men in his
debt or of his liege men which determines the power of the public figure and which makes it
possible to make him elected.See the example of Orgetorix among our Helvetian friends in
Switzerland.It is supposed that the chief was assisted by a council. His well-understood
interest was therefore always to be approved by a strong majority even an almost consensus
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in order, as it is said, “to drop” the maximum of these makers of opinion in his decision-
making; especially for the case where they would lead to a resounding failure! Elementary
caution (in order to save their head in a way) therefore forced all these leaders, by realism
and not by idealism, to the largest democracy. Once again let us highlight it, it is far from
being always the case in our modern pseudo-democracies.Some principles seem to preside
over the “government “of the chief: distinct civil and military power, annual elections, only one
member of the council or of the “government” per family. According to some other historians,
the system of hereditary leadership was also very current.The druids form the religious class
and the other side of the aristocracy: they are priests and intellectuals. There was not
opposition between faith and reason or science like nowadays. The class of the druids, true
clergy, also elects its leader. Election which can involve conflicts and even the use of
weapons or of the force according to Caesar on this subject. The high knowers of the
druidiaction (druidecht) in the country meet once a year. They are not constrained to the
military service, but are allowed to fight alongside theirs if they wish it. They went “to school”
since they were very little and have studied (until they are twenty or twenty-five years old
approximately). They are spiritual advisers, some religious advisers and, of course, for the
religious believers admitted specialists with regard to the divine wills, experts in the art to put
the gods on one’s side; with the result that they take part alongside the knights in the political
life of their tribe. The society of the high knowers of the druidiaction is made up of judges,
lawyers, teachers (education of the noble young people), physicians, and poets (the famous
bards).
Around the end of the independence period, large social upheavals had begun to happen. A
revolt of kshatriyas in Hindu terminology. The kingship disappears replaced gradually by
vergobretship. The knights, the noble men, become the masters of the land. Besides we see
whole hill forts i.e., built-up areas, fallen in the dependence of a chief like Lucterius in the time
of Caesar. Then people and war prisoners (slaves) come. It seems that slaves and common
people, those who worked, were socially separate only by a rather thin barrier at the time. The
typical Celtic family plays a crucial role in the society. It is of the patriarchal type softened by a
relative equality as regards the role of women (let us say a beginning of equality men/women
joint to the recognition of a certain sacredness in the women: they are often medium,
clairvoyant, and healers, in short in favored touch with the forces of the hereafter). The
household head has nevertheless power of life and death over his wife and his children. This
Indo-European characteristic is moderated by unmemorable uses perhaps dating back to the
tribes of hunter-gatherers. We are there, therefore, the exact opposite of the place left to
women in Islam. The noble child is intended to bear arms, while the “non-noble” child must
seek a land to cultivate or a trade to practice.
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REMARKS ABOUT THE CELTIZATION.
THE DIFFERENT DESIGNS OF THE CELTIC EMPIRE (AMBICATUS’s CELTICUM IN LIVY).
Litavia is a term meaning approximately,in Celtic: “Stretch/Space/Immensity“.The insular
Celts used the word “Litavia” a long time besides to refer to continental Celtica, and the
Welshmen still designate Armorican Brittany by the name of “Llydaw“ (a word derived from
Litavia).1. Plurality of temporary confederations and fiercely isolated units, having hardly in
common collective names, but without more unity, even linguistic.2. Mass of independent
communities grouped as things come in rival and more or less temporary confederations, but
enjoying nevertheless a certain linguistic unity.3. The same thing, but with in addition the
intellectual unity of a common civilization, of which cohesion was kept by the high knowers of
the druidiaction (druidecht).Each one of these three ideas of the Celtic Empire being able to
be accompanied by three different linguistic levels.A. Relative Community of lexical pool,
enabling mutual comprehension.B. Plurality of dialects, but upholding, by the high knowers of
the druidiaction (druidecht), of a vehicular language following the example of the Globish
today.C. Real language unity at a given time.
Only one thing is sure. There were, of course, temporary hegemonies, and over notable parts
of the territory (see Livy’s Ambicatus), but there was never a total pan-Celtic organic unity,
taken on by a military or political power. To speak about Gaul in the singular for example, is a
phantasm, rightly ridiculed by anti-racists.
Historians hesitate between these various assumptions. Most probable is the combination 3.C
for the core or the bulk of the continental block increased with the southern two thirds of Great
Britain; and the combination 3.B for the peripheral zones like Iberian Peninsula, Ireland or
Scotland.We can, of course, also imagine other combinations.
!--- -------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------!
As each one knows or would know, the Celts are at the beginning only immigrants coming
from another country (allobroges) whose cradle of origin is located somewhere in Central
Europe 1000 or 2000 years before our era. In the West and East Europe, they look like
conquerors having subjected native or indigenous populations: some dhimmis called Atectai
(Gaelic Aithech Tuatha).
Economic exchanges, spreading of knowledge, colonization movements, and religious
conversions by verbal or military persuasion, have led to the progressive change, from the
Bronze Age until the Middle Ages, of all the European cultures.
The Danubian growth of the third century before our era and the moving of the center of
gravity of the transalpine Celtic world, from Switzerland towards Bohemia and Moravia, which
is the consequence of that, as well as the fast development of the new Danubian provinces;
form major events in the history of ancient Europe; for a long time underestimated or badly
understood. It is clear indeed that the existence of ethnic units unstable, but dynamic, able to
integrate or structure some elements of disparate origin; particularly well illustrated by the
case of the Volques Tectosages; parallel to the presence of old, stable and having put down
roots for a long time in an ancestral terroir, peoples; enables to explain the very diversified
characteristic of the Celtic settlement and its different evolutions according to the areas. The
astonishing speed or effectiveness of the Danubian growth, appears much more
comprehensible when one appreciates the value of the Celtic ability to find a modus vivendi
with the indigenous peoples of the captured lands; who were to be probably often majority.
The eloquent illustration of this living together is the assimilation of elements specific to the
local cultures which characterizes the Celts of the Carpatic Basin as well as the Scordisc
population of the Danubian plain. Of course, these influences did not change substantially the
ideological foundation of the growth of which the most eloquent reflection is provided by the
images that modeled or engraved Celtic artists in the area. The art of the Danubian Celts
remains fully integrated in the same world of ideas which is inseparable of La Tene art since
the fifth century; and which finds in the third century before our era a remarkable unitary
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expression by forming the common language, the cultural koine, of La Tene Celts“(Venceslas
Kruta. Revista de Guimarães, Especial Volume, I, Guimarães, 1999, pp. 51-85).
The links between victors and overcome [the dhimmis of the time. Atectos or Atecta in the
singular. Atectoi in the plural. Atectai when it is spoken about them as a class or a community,
like the Aithech Tuatha in Ireland] without any doubt were framed by precise rules stated by
the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht).
The role of the Celtic king (or vergobret of course), in Ireland ard ri (cf. Ambicatus on the
Continent) was to redistribute the wealth of the territory subjected to his authority.
RIGHTS OF THE NON-DRUIDICIST * LIVING WITHIN A CELTIC OR CELTIZED
COMMUNITY STILL...EXAMPLE: THAT ONE OF ASIA MINOR (CURRENT TURKEY).
* Preliminary terminological clarification. Although there are obviously worships of Celtic origin
in the Iberian Peninsula and in Asia Minor (Galatia), the word druid is not really witnessed in
these areas of the world. In Asia Minor for example, we know only the Greek term dikastes
(meaning judge) to speak about them. Some purists therefore question the use of these
notions (of druids, of druidism, or of faithful of druidism) as regards these areas of the world
(Spain Turkey). They prefer the word “druidicist” (= who learns druidism, who is more or less
influenced by druidism).
!--- --------------------- -----------------------------!
Settled on the high plateaus of Anatolia, Galatians who were to be still in majority members of
the generation of the “Great expedition “ native to Central Europe; formed as soon as the
second quarter of the third century before our era, a federation of peoples known as
“Community of Galatians” (Koinon Galaton); which was probably inspired by models not only
peculiar to the Celtic populations of their origin areas, but also to the whole of Celts. This
organization is particularly well described by Strabo.
The Galatians, then, are to the south of the Paphlagonians. And of these there are three
tribes; two of them, the Trocmi and the Tolistobogii, are named after their leaders, whereas
the third, the Tectosages, is named after the tribe in Celtica. This district was occupied by the
Galatians after they had wandered about for a long time, and after they had overrun the
country that was subject to the Attalic and the Bithynian kings, until by voluntary cession they
received the present Galatia, or Gallo-Graecia, as it is called. Leonorius is generally reputed
to have been the chief leader of their expedition across to Asia. The three tribes spoke the
same language and differed from each other in no respect; and each was divided into four
portions which were called tetrarchies, each tetrarchy having its own tetrarch, and also one
druid [Greek dikastes] and one military chief [Greek stratophylaks] , both subject to the
tetrarch, and two subordinate commanders [ in Greek hypo-stratophylaks]. The Council of the
twelve Tetrarchs consisted of three hundred men, who assembled at Drunemeton, as it was
called. Now the Council passed judgment upon murder cases, but the tetrarchs and the
druids [Greek dikastes] upon all others. Such, then, was the constitution of Galatia long ago,
but in my time the power has passed to three rulers, then to two; and then to one, Dejotarus,
and then to Amyntas, who succeeded him” (Geography book XII, chapter V, 1).Setting aside
the Greek name given to the various offices (tetrarkhia, stratophylaks, hypo-stratophylaks,
and dikastes) a result of the influence exerted by the Hellenic environment; we find a type of
organization which shows many common points with that of the Celtic peoples of the first half
of the first century before our era. Particularly that which is described by Caesar,
unfortunately in a less systematic way, and other indications we can glean in the texts. The
tetrarchy matches the pagus or county, which seems to be the result of the quadripartite
division of a more important unit, the tribal confederation, generally designated by the name
of “people.”Besides we will find still its principle in pre-Christian Ireland, divided into four parts
which contribute each one to a common territory, the province of the Middle (Midhe), which
was supposed to fulfill the unity of the whole. Its continental equivalent is the Mediolanum
(“Center of the territory“), attested among various Celtic peoples in many place
names.However, and unlike the already urbanized or in the process of urbanization Celtic
tribes, Galatians of Asia Minor show a settlement structure which seems to remain
fundamentally rural. And which indisputably is very marked by the concerns of military nature
specific to mobile populations of armed immigrants.
Nobody indeed ascribes to the aforementioned Celts the complete and permanent occupancy
of these provinces. We should understand here through the word conquest, neither the
expropriation of the inhabitants, nor a somewhat regular occupation of the land (just like in the
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case of the first Muslims regarding the overcome natives).Each clan remained entrenched , a
part of the year, either in its wagon camp, or in a stronghold; the rest of the time, it went its
rounds through the country, followed by its herds and the cities paid it a tribute in money, the
countryside in supplies; but the action of these conquerors was limited to that; they
interfered in no way in the domestic affairs of their tributaries [in that therefore they prefigured
the best behavior of the first Muslims with regards to the dhimmis in this part of the world) .....
Many acts of violence undoubtedly had to mark these rounds: in Ephesus, the conquerors
found, it s said, a Tarpeia.
The king of the Galatians, when he was ravaging Asia, came to Ephesus and fell in love with
a maiden Demonicê. She promised to satisfy his desires and also to betray Ephesus, if he
would give her the Galatians' bracelets and feminine ornaments. But Brennus required his
soldiers to throw into the lap of the avaricious woman the gold which they were wearing. This
they did, and she was buried alive by the abundance of gold. This Cleitophon relates in the
first book of his Galatic History” (Pseudo-Plutarch. Greek and Roman parallel stories. Chapter
XV. Demonice and Tarpeia). The famous suicide of the Miletus virgins, reported by the true
Plutarch, is perhaps also a consequence of the exactions committed by some Galatians
against the populations fallen in their power.
But it is certain, on the other hand, that the Pergamon dynasty was not stopped for as much.
Memnon even says, about this upholding of the indigenous governments, that in fact the
arrival of the Celts was favorable to the country, because the kings endeavored to destroy
democracy (of the Greek colonies), and the newcomers protected it on the contrary, by
containing its enemies (History of Heraclea, Photius’s bibliotheca).
A little more than one half-century after their settling on the high plateaus of Anatolia, the
Galatians that the Roman army commanded by the consul Gnaeus Manlius Vulso faces, still
avoided being locked up in the cities; and preferred to be set up on the heights that they
changed into makeshift fortresses. Three or four generations after their arrival in Asia Minor,
they seemed therefore to remain attached to a rural environment; where they could preserve,
without difficulty, an organization which enabled them to keep their ethnic coherence in
relation to the indigenous environment of the Atectai, which was fundamentally urban. Even
the representatives of their elite, yet very close to the local aristocracies, seem to have
resided only temporarily in the great urban centers of the territories which were under their
control. They preferred to live and to keep their treasures in localities which were, of course,
inside territories peopled mainly if not exclusively by their fellows; and similar to the amsar
(plural of misr) or permanent military camps which the towns of Kufa and Basra were, a few
centuries later, a little more in the south (in the neighboring country). The secondary
characteristic of these residential sites; probably some kinds of large fortified farms, similar to
those we find from the fifth century before our era in the initial area of La Tene civilization;
explains that we know up to now, at best, only their names. The settling in a rural
environment, favorable to the keeping of a social system based on kinship, played, of course,
an essential role in the extraordinary ability of resistance to the linguistic assimilation by the
Globish of the time: the Greek language. Evidence of that: the upholding of the practice
(noted by saint Jerome), of a language similar to the dialect still spoken among the Treveri in
the current Germany around the end of the fourth century of our era.
N.B. The life of Saint Euthymius written by Cyril of Scythopolis (today Bet Shean in Israel)
besides mentions still a monk contemporary of the saint, therefore living in the 6th century,
named Procopius, native of Galatia, and who sometimes still spoke in Galatian. This is the
paragraph LV (page 77 of the edition of Eduard Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis, Leipzig,
1939).
The exact phrase is "His tongue was bound, he could no longer speak to us. If he was forced
to do so, he spoke in the language of the Galatians.
This type of settling also provides the explanation of the astonishing demographic strength
which enabled the descendants of the twenty thousand Celts having crossed the straits in the
year 278 before our era, to survive as an ethnic group while taking part in all the regional
conflicts and therefore while leaving thousands of dead on the battle fields.Formed with groups
enlisted in Central Europe for a military expedition of large scale, Galatians thus provide a
remarkable account, thanks to the many texts which concern them, on the type of organization
which made possible the historical expansion of the Celts; and their settling in various areas
alongside the indigenous populations (the Atectai). Structured in a kind of military oligarchy,
they lived apparently in the margin of the urban population of the region, which does not seem
to have undergone very appreciable upheavals following their definitive settlement.The main
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contacts as well as the integration phenomena seem to have concerned only the elite which
succeeded in establishing a modus vivendi with the native public figures. The priesthood of the
great goddess-or-demoness of Pessinus for example was shared between five Galatians and
five Phrygians, thus illustrating the great ability of adaptation of the newcomers to the local
traditions of the Atectai and their will to avoid traumatic changes…… [Once again we are there,
regarding this point, that of religion, and not of economy or of simple citizenship, opposite to
what the first Muslims made with the faithful of other religions. It is enough to count the number
of Mazdaeans become Zoroastrians who still remain in Iran or the number of Copts in
Egypt].The case of the transalpine Celts who burst into Eastern Venezia in 186 before our era,
and took possession of the territory by founding a hill fort, is appreciably different. The colonial
enterprise, because it is well of that it is a question, is then closely combined with the
establishment of a center intended to become a town. The Romans were not mistaken about
that.
“Lucius Julius was directed to hasten his departure. Transalpine Celts, as has been said
before, crossing into Italy by a pass hitherto unknown, were building a city in the territory
which now belongs to Aquileia. The praetor was instructed to prevent them from doing this”
(Livy, History of Rome, book XXXIX, chapter XLV, 6).It should be admitted therefore that the
Celts in question (some Carni or some warriors coming from the Carnic Alps) had an idea of
territory occupation which was different from that of the former migrations; who don't seem to
have considered the establishment of community centers other than those that were made
necessary by their religion, such as the central shrine of the Galatians called Drunemeton
(according to Venceslas Kruta. Revista de Guimarães, Especial Volume, I, Guimarães, 1999,
pp. 51-85).
COMMENT BY PETER DELACRAU.
Unless, of course, it was there the attempt to build a stronghold somewhat similar to those
constructed by the first Muslims on the territory of current Iraq as we have said already
higher, a misr like Kufa (or Basra). Let us not forget, moreover, that the idea of the foundation
of a new town was not completely unknown to the Celts since, according to the pseudo-
Plutarch, it was the case of Lugdunum.
Situated nearby is a mountain called Lugdunum [Lougdounon in the Greek text]. It was
renamed for a reason of this sort. Momorus and Atepomarus, expelled from the realm by
Seseroneus, were intending, according to an injunction, to found a city on this crest. While the
foundations were being dug, ravens, having appeared out of nowhere and fluttered about,
filled the trees all around. And Momorus, experienced in augury, named the city Lugdunum
[Lougdounun in Greek]. For they call the raven lugus [lougos] in their dialect, and a prominent
spot a dunum [dounon in the Greek text], as Cleitophon records in Foundations XIII.”First
attempt to answer the question: from the Cimbri or Teutons to the Galatians through the
Bastarnae of the Black Sea, why such a fast Celtization of the peoples? And if it were quite
simply because of the learned sense of justice, of all these alleged barbarians, because of
their sense of honor, of their generosity of great lords (noblesse, true noblesse, oblige!). We
speak well here about their learned sense of justice and not about their inborn sense of
justice.
There were dicastes [Greek dicastes judges] among the ancient Galatians because the
druidicist community as a whole is joined together in its responsibility concerning the
implementation of druidic ethics and the implementation of its principles in all the fields,
including those concerning non-druidicists. If some individuals neglect their duty, wander
away from the right track, make an injustice or cross the line, there is to be, among druidicists,
men or women to make that obviously condemnable, to bring back them to the sense of
equity; to enjoin them to observe the good practices. Men and women who are lined up on the
side of the oppressed people even though they would be of a religion different from their (see
the case of Cavarus and of the war having broken out between Byzantines Thracians and
Bithynians).The non-druidicist, of course, may complain, as everyone, if he considers his
rights ridiculed, even to come, if it is necessary, to the highest level of jurisdiction passing
judgment, in order justice is returned to him!
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The first right the surviving non-Celts enjoyed in the territories fallen in the hands of Celts
(after the defeat of their military forces) was therefore, that goes without saying, but it's best to
mention it, that to live. The inviolability of their person and property (once peace was
established). This basic rule was to be imposed by the high knowers of the druidiaction
(druidecht) of whom one of the functions was also to be ambassadors, even if in Celtiberia the
lexical existence of druids is not attested (in Galatia they were called dikastes in Greek
language) .
Diodorus of Sicily, book IV, chapter XIX, mentioning a legend concerning the druidic god
Ogmios, compared to Heracles by the Greco-Romans: “Heracles, then, delivered over the
kingdom of the Iberians to the noblest men among the natives and, on his part, took his army
and passing into Celtica and traversing the length and breadth of it he put an end to the
lawlessness and murder of strangers to which the people had become addicted... Heracles
then made his way from Celtica to Italy, and as he traversed the mountain pass through the
Alps he made a highway out of the route, which was rough and almost impassable, with the
result that it can now be crossed by armies and baggage trains. The barbarians who had
inhabited this mountain region had been accustomed to butcher and to plunder such armies
as passed through when they came to the difficult portions of the way, but he subdued them
all, slew those that were the leaders in lawlessness of this kind, and made the journey safe for
succeeding generations. And after crossing the Alps, he passed through the level plain of
what is now called Galatia and made his way through Liguria.”Nicholas of Damascus.
Collection of remarkable customs. A fragment preserved by Stobaeus: “Among them, man is
punished more rigorously for the murder of a stranger than for that of a fellow citizen: in the
first case, death, in the second exile only. Those they honor most are the conquerors who
have expanded the national territory. The doors of their houses are never closed, etc.”
Tiricantam bercunetacam tocoitoscue sarniciocue sua combalces nelitomnecue [u]ertaunei
litom necue taunei litom necue masnai tisaunei litom sos aucu arestaio tamai uta oscues
stena uersoniti silabur sleitom conscilitom cabiseticantom sancilistara otanaum tocoitei eniuta
oscues boustomue coruinomue.
Immediately after, as allies, even simple vassals, came, for the overcome peoples (Atectai,
Gaelic Aithech Tuatha) the right to be protected. A protection against the external aggression
intended so that they can continue to live and to work in full safety. It was besides still the
theoretical role of the nobility in the Middle Ages with respect to the commons of the Third
State (the clerics, as for them, were supposed to pray for everybody).
Regarding external aggression, these non-Celtic peoples (the Atectai or Aithech, called
Shudras by the Aryans in India) then had apparently rights identical to true Celts (in mind; let
us not be stupidly racist, the Celts had never formed a pure race). This was the well-
understood interest of the local Celtic princes, because it was advantageous for them, of
course, to have the most subjects, liege men, or allies, possible. See the case of Orgetorix in
what was going to become Switzerland. “On the day appointed for the pleading of his cause,
Orgetorix drew together from all quarters to the court, all his vassals to the number of ten
thousand persons; and led together to the same place all his dependents and debtor
bondsmen, of whom he had a great number; by means of those he rescued himself from [the
necessity of] pleading his cause” (Caesar, book I, chapter IV).As the French John Bodin said
a few centuries later: “there is wealth only in men“.The Celtic princes placed in this situation
therefore had to carry out, through the power and military force they held, to ensure this
protection to their Atectai (the Shudras in India). And this protection was to be also exerted
outside, any Celtic prince who wants to be respected having to defend his subjects or to take
care of them, even outside of his territory.On the domestic level, this duty of protection of any
Celtic prince who wants to be respected, towards his subjects, whatever they are, had to
include the protection of persons, as well as the protection of their properties. We saw it with
the Celtiberian inscription of Botorrita I.The murder or the assault and battery against non-
celticists living in a territory controlled by Celts were strictly prohibited by the dicastes or
druids of this time, it is, at least, apparently, what results from the aforementioned quotation
of Diodorus of Sicily and of Nicholas of Damascus .The text is not very clear, but we can
deduce from it that this status of the Atectai/Aithech tuatha in territory controlled by true Celts
or Celtized peoples (case of Cimbri, Teutones and Bastarnae for example, contrary to the sad
fate of the Shudras in India) implied that it was forbidden to harm their bodily even mental
perhaps, integrity. Even in the case of delay for the payment of the tributes, in cash or in kind.
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The high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) who was very fussy as regards law were to
take care of that. As it is said in Paris: 99 sheep plus 1 inhabitant of the Champagne Province
equal 100 animals, but the good shepherd shears his sheep, he does not flay them.
The maximum punishment in this case was to be the seizure, and not the imprisonment (the
druidism of Early Times had never heard of prison, what matters it is the repairing or the
compensation, financial or other. We could add today community services).Just as their
person, the possessions of the Atectoi/Aithech are also to be protected. What was perhaps
not always the case of the Shudras in India, it is true. But this protection of possessions had
in no way to go up to the sacralization of private property in the Roman way (right to use
AND MISUSE…) Since the property of the means of production (land forests, etc.) belonged
to the community, not to private individuals who had only the right to use them.
Frederick Engels. Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State ."The oldest Celtic
laws which have been preserved show the gens still fully alive: in Ireland, after being forcibly
broken up by the English, it still lives today in the consciousness of the people, as an instinct
at any rate; in Scotland it was still in full strength in the middle of the eighteenth century, and
here again it succumbed only to the weapons, laws, and courts of the English....The existence
of the Irish gens (sept; the tribe was called clann, clan) is confirmed and described not only by
the old legal codes, but also by the English jurists of the seventeenth century who were sent
over to transform the Gaelic clan lands into domains of the English crown. Until then, the land
had been the common property of the clan or gens, in so far as the chieftains had not already
converted it into their private domains. When a member of the gens died and a household
consequently came to an end, the gentile chief (the English jurists called him caput
cognationis) made a new division of the whole territory among the remaining
households. ...The gens also lives on in the “factions.” The Irish peasants often divide
themselves into parties based apparently on perfectly absurd or meaningless distinctions; to
the English they are quite incomprehensible and seem to have no other purpose than the
favorite ceremony of two factions hammering one another. They are artificial revivals, modern
substitutes for the dispersed gentes, manifesting in their own peculiar manner the persistence
of the inherited gentile instinct. In some districts the members of the gens still live pretty much
together on the old territory; in the ’thirties the great majority of the inhabitants of County
Monaghan still had only four family names, that is, they were descended from four clans or
gentes.In Scotland the decay of the gentile organization dates from the suppression of the
rising of 1745. The precise function of the Scottish clan in this organization still awaits
investigation; but that the clan is a gentile body is beyond doubt. In Walter Scott's novels the
Highland clan lives before our eyes. It is, says Morgan: an excellent type of the gens in
organization and in spirit, and an extraordinary illustration of the power of the gentile life over
its members.... We find in their feuds and blood revenge, in their localization by gentes, in
their use of lands in common, in the fidelity of the clansman to his chief and of the members
of the clan to each other, the usual and persistent features of gentile society...”
But let us stop our quotation of Engels there, for fear McCarthy blames us for being horrible
libertarian Communists.
What is obvious, it is the tolerance of the Celts in dominant position was such that they
respected what was valued or regarded as sacred in the religion of non-Celts, although
existing in no way in druidry. The case of worship to be paid to the great goddess-or-
demoness adored under the shape of Cybele, in Pessinus, is the best evidence of that. The
Galatians druids (dikastes) of course made of her at the time a druidica interpretatio in
conformity with their wishes, but she was in noway a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if it is
preferred, of Celtic appearance, at the origin, since it was the Cybele of the Phrygian people,
symbolized as in Mecca by a black stone that each one kissed. But she was worshipped
nevertheless too, at least for half, by Galatians (her priesthood was then exerted on an equal
footing between five Galatians and five Phrygians) as Venceslas Kruta points it out for us,
very usefully (a good example of religious tolerance, can staunch Muslims say the same thing
in spite of the true worship they pay to the black stone called Hajar Al Aswad at the time of
their pilgrimage in Mecca: it is supposed to absorb the sins of whoever touches it or kisses
it)??Another example of this tolerance of the former Celts, of Wicca type in the religious field,
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and of which Muslims would be quite unable: Strabo, book IV, chapter IV, 6. “ In the ocean,
he says, there is a small island, not very far out to sea, situated off the outlet of the Liger
River; and the island is inhabited by women of the Namnetes [in Greek Samnitôn], they are
possessed by Dionysus and make this god propitious by appeasing him with mystic initiations
as well as other sacred performances; no man sets foot on the island, although the women
themselves, sailing from it, have intercourse with the men and then return.”
The respect of the true Celts as for the spirit , regarding the habits of the Atectai/Aithech
therefore went very far, much farther than in the case of the Shudras in India. See also on this
subject the more anecdotal episode of the adultery of the wife of Partholon.
Anger seized Partholon, but the beautiful Elugnata answered him what follows.
It is not easy to resist nature.Prudence is to put the lambs asideIf it is wanted that those which
grewDo not any more suckle the ewes.The kittens should never be leftJust beside a milk
bowlOne should never entrust to a woodcutterGuard of an axe of great valueWhen the chest
in which this axe is keptDo not close with a key.
Out of rage he stoned the dog of his wife, Sagimaros (yes, because in druidry it is the dog
which failed in its duty of vigilance which is stoned, not the woman).
On the other hand are we obliged to believe Muslims when they maintain to respect including
pig among non-Muslims?
If the wine and the pig are owned by a non-Muslim, they are regarded as a possession
legitimate for him, even as a possession among the most invaluable ones like Hanafi jurists
notified it. Whoever causes damage to Dhimmis in this respect is held to pay him
compensation equal to their value “.N.B. Is this opinion an idea shared by the majority of
Muslims?? We doubt it, strongly. There is besides a divergence between the Muslims on this
subject. It is the opinion of the Hanafi School which is quoted here, not another one.
In Ireland there were two types of mandatory “contribution”: the tribute paid by the peripheral
peoples, overcome or in status of inferiority, often paid with cattle to be more easily conveyed
towards the sovereign who was to have it; and taxes (at the time in kind) paid by the
“immediate” subjects of the great king, peasants or craftsmen who lived in the most central
lands directly under his control.
The boroma or borama.A kind of indirect tax because it was collected by the person in charge
of the human community subjected to this tribute (a vassal king in general). According to the
Irish tradition the first king of kings having levied the boroma or borama would be the
somewhat mythical Teutovalos (Tuathal) Techtmar, in the first or second century of our era.
The prose Boroma Laigen (it is a manuscript in Gaelic language) provides us a detailed list of
what was to be paid then to this great king of kings.
Is í seo immorro inn éraic .i.Tri choicait cét bó.Tri cóicait cét mucc.Trí cóicait cét lendbratt. Tri
cóicait cét slabrad argit.Tri cóicait cét molt.Tri cóicait cét coire uma.Cóire mór uma i téigtís da
muic déc 7 dá ag dec i tech Temrach fein.Tricha bó find óiderg col-lóegaib a comdatha 7 co
nascaib créduma 7 co mbuargib créduma 7 cona cóidib creduma fair sin anuas.
What means roughly speaking (let our brothers or sisters of Ireland forgive me
mistranslations):
Here in what this compensation (eric) consistedThrice five thousand cows:Thrice five
thousand swine:Thrice five thousand coats:Thrice five thousand silver chains:Thrice five
thousand sheep (castrated rams):Thrice thousand brass cauldrons:A great brass cauldron in
which twelve swine pigs and twelve beeves could hold in the royal residence of Tara
itself.Thirty white, red-eared cows with calves of the same color, with ties of bronze with
tethers of bronze, and their milk pail (?) of bronze in addition thereto.
The mention of coats of chains and of cauldrons also means that the class of the craftsmen
was also solicited.
The compilation entitled Leabhar Mór Na nGenealach or Great Book of the genealogies,
achieved by Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh in the 17th century, although providing us a whole
list of battles won by Teutovalos (Tuathal) Techtmar, devotes only some words to this tribute
which was to be paid to him after each one of his victories.
Iarsna cathaibh sin do rónadh Fes Teamhra la Tuathal, agus tánghattar fir Ereann agus a
mná dha ionsoighidh, <agus> tugsad rátha fris na ndúl aicsidhe agus neamhaicsidhe agus
gach gradh fuil fo nimh agus in neam nach ereochdaois , na aghaidh, na in aghaidh a
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chloinne go brath. As íad so iomorra na tuatha as a ffuil daoirchíos for Erinn o sin ale (…)
Conidh amhlaidh sin ro fodhladh na tuatha, agus do cuireadh cíos Ereann orra, conadh xlvii
tuatha re a n-áiremh uile.
After these battles was celebrated the feast of Tara organized by Tuathal, and the men of
Ireland as well as their wives came to him to swear solemnly, on the elements visible and
invisible, and all that lives under the sky or in heaven, that they would never rebel against him
nor against his descendants. These are the tribes from which is since demanded the servile
tribute in Ireland (…) it was in this way that the tribes were treated, and the Irish tribute was
imposed on them, there are 47 of them altogether.
A levy even followed by the qualifier mandatory is not completely the right word to designate
this first type of tax since it was in a way a gift, somewhat forced, but a gift, however, or let us
say a buying back, each year, by the overcome peoples or their descendants, of their right to
manage themselves in an autonomous way. In Ireland this type of tax paid by the former
overcome peoples even by those who feared being again so in the event of a conflict was
called boroma (traditionally explained as being a compound of the elements bó “cattle” and
rím “account”).This tribute sometimes was undoubtedly also paid in men (and women, of
course, who were still more expensive) for the same reasons (as for the cattle): ease to make
it come in the hands of his payee: such a tribute is indeed in a way “automotive” by
definition: firmly flanked by some well-armed strapping lads it is able to be self moving
towards its final destination. Although this practice undoubtedly is badly distinguished from
the hostage taking in the original sense of the word. Let us remind nevertheless the hostage
is in no way a slave.Thereafter and after the introduction of money the borama was also paid
in gold or silver coins by those who were subjected to such a tribute.
The tithe.Information misses as regards the second type of taxes the tax taken directly on the
incomes of the land or of the craft industry perhaps but it should be noted that we find
mention of it in the eighth line of the Celtiberian inscription of Botorrita I in the form
Tecametinas or Tecametam (decamet… the tenth part, the tithe).The Celtiberian text of
Botorrita I seems indeed to be the writing down of a kind of contract between a tribe chief and
a farmer.And in the numerous expressions of the kind bratoudecantem or bratoudecanten of
the Greek inscriptions according to Michael Lejeune. For example
KASSITALOS OUERSIKNOS·D EDE·BRATOUD E·KANTENA.
KassitalosOuersiknosDede bratouDekantena Ala [i] nos.Kassitalos ouersiknos dede bratou
dekantena.
Cassitalos son of Versios offered this tithe (or votive offering?) in thanks.
As trades not directly related to supplying of agricultural or handcrafted products of everyday
usage (food, material, pottery, etc.) developed, it was also to be tithes paid out of money.
Tolls.To these two types of tax, we should add perhaps a third one, a kind of toll in a way, the
gifts that the passing foreigners felt forced to offer to the ruler of the area while coming on his
lands, so strongly established in habits that they are described as customs in many
languages. Gifts in coins of the realm if necessary.
THE PATH OF THE FOURTH FUNCTION.
Where G. Dumezil saw three functions, should we not add a fourth one, explanatory in turn of
facts specific to certain stories? Arjuna resembles Ulysses as Penelope resembles Draupadi
whereas Cuchulain is enlightened thanks to the Odyssey even to the Mahabharata. The main
mistake, what blindness, of the great French mythographer who was George Dumezil, are
indeed not to have understood that in addition to the three traditional functions of Indo-
European civilization, there existed a fourth one, besides highlighted by Rees brothers then
by Nicholas J. ALLEN, and grouping what is on the margins, strange and foreign, in short
what escapes the initial Aryan order.The thesis that we will assume in this short summary of
our convictions is that these stories dealing with otherness, developing including
transcendence to the detriment of the rejection nihilism, can come only from the reflection of
the primordial druids of the Celtic world about the destiny of the peoples overcome by their
princes and their warriors: the Atectai/Aithech Tuatha, 3000 or 4000 years ago, somewhere
north of the Alps in Central Europe.
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It goes without saying that victors at least expected from overcome peoples that they respect
the god-or-demons or the goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if you prefer, of the victors. On
the other hand the victorious Celts went as far as also honoring the deities of the overcome
peoples: for example the great goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of Pessinus, known as Cybele.
We ignore the exact shape that the Celtica interpretatio made by the druids (dikastes) of this
local deity took, but the fact is: there were high priests in her worship, of Celtic origin, and
even still Celtic speaking.For example Attis in 163 since the name of his brother was Aiorix,
The victorious Celts expected therefore from the overcome peoples (Atectai or Aithech
Tuatha) that they honor in the same way and reciprocally, their god-or-demons as well as
their goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if this word is preferred.Besides the love for their
god-or-demons or goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if you want, in the eyes of the high
knowers of the time, was enough to justify their lives are spared; and such a love for the
druidic deities therefore was to carry out the immediate safety of the overcome: the Atectai
(Aithech Tuatha in Ireland, Shudras in India).
This will from the victorious people not to go farther and to be satisfied with appearances or
external signs as regards the worship (paid to their gods); not to behave like the Muslim
Inquisition (Mihna/Hisba) or the Christian Inquisition later, before the word existed (by
tormenting the bodies in order to violate the secret of the consciences); must in no way be
considered tantamount to some indifferentism or hypocrisy, in spite of its small casuistic
likeness but as the evidence that these primordial druids had such a faith in the pertinence of
their gods, that they were beyond doubt persuaded that they matched well too, what the non-
druidicist overcome people sought, even thought to have found, when they worshipped their
own deities. Let us conclude in this way this paragraph on the problems raised by the
druidica interpretatio of the non-Celtic deities. We are generally enough critical of Islam to
recognize without difficulty that we may credit the first advocates of this religion with the
attitude they agreed to have regarding men as Abu Sufyan, the Tulaqa, by agreeing to treat
them as co-religionists as the others in spite of the somewhat forced characteristic of their
conversion.
God had cleared a path in this way, for the conversion of Abu Sufyan, so that he returns to
Mecca to ask his inhabitants to cease the fight. The difficulty consists in knowing what the
value of a conversion done under the sword is worth. Abu Sufyan began while affirming that
he doubted before, one moment later, to pronounce a double profession of faith. It is not
requested from the Muslim during fight to assess the genuineness of the conversion of
infidels while attributing it to fear or to the covetousness of the spoils, or while reproaching it
for being a simple simulation. Because what Islam advises is not to look in the hearts and the
consciences, but only to correct the visible mistakes” (It is true that Abu Sufyan and his
progeny nevertheless had the last laugh since they ended up inheriting Muhammad’s Empire,
even killing his favorite grandchildren. But that is another story).
Let us be clearer than our Muslim brothers, and let us suppose that the primordial druids
implemented with their gods the same trustful certainty as that which appears in the central
part of the great Indian epic poem called Mahabharata and probably dating back to the
second century before our era. It is a dialog between the god Krishna/Vishnu and prince
Arjuna, the latter hesitating to start a great fratricidal battle.
Bhagavad Gita 9, 23-29. “Those who are devotees of other gods and who worship them with
faith actually worship only me, O son of Kunti, but they do so in a wrong way because I am
the only enjoyer and master of all sacrifices. If one offers me with love and devotion a leaf, a
flower, fruit or water, I accept it. I envy no one, nor am I partial to anyone. I am equal to all.
But whoever renders service unto me in devotion is a friend, is in me, and I am also a friend
to him.”
Editor’s note. We have translated the Sanskrit word Kaunteya by “son of Kunti” but if
somebody has better to suggest, let him tell it to us!
What is certain it is that such a form of self-confidence but implemented to their own gods
(thus in practice of tolerance) had much to contribute to the spreading of the druidic religion,
of its panth-eon, of its myths.
As we could see it on many occasions, the Celts had a keen sense of Justice…It is what we
can deduce from their attitude during the Punic Wars (support for the oppressed brother
peoples). At least according to Livy. Book XXI. Chapter XX.
When the ambassadors, after extolling the renown and courage of the Roman people and
the greatness of their dominion, asked the Celts not to allow the Carthaginian invaders a
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passage through their fields and cities, such interruption and laughter broke out that the
younger men were with difficulty kept quiet by the magistrates and senior members of the
council. They thought it a most stupid and impudent demand to make: that the Celts, in order
to prevent the war from spreading into Italy, should turn it against themselves and expose
their own lands to be ravaged instead of other peoples. After quiet was restored the envoys
were informed that the Romans had rendered them no service, nor had the Carthaginians
done them any injury to make them take up arms either on behalf of the Romans or against
the Carthaginians. On the other hand, they heard that men of their race were being expelled
from Italy, and made to pay tribute to Rome, and subjected to every other indignity. Their
experience was the same in all the other councils of Celtica; nowhere did they hear a kindly or
even a tolerably peaceable word till they reached Marseilles.”
In other words, a clear condemnation of this new Roman method: the expulsion of the
overcome peoples out of their land (once again, let us point it out that the Celts let the
peoples they had overcome live on their land, see the case of Galatians) and insults.But this
sense of justice was also applied to the non-Celtic people. At least if we understand the case
of the last king of Tylis (east of Bulgaria 273 to - 214) named Cavarus,well.
Polybius. Histories.
Book VIII (fragments). Chapter XXIV."Cavarus, king of the Celts in Thrace, was of a truly
royal and high-minded disposition, he gave the merchants sailing into the Euxine Pontus
great protection, and rendered the Byzantines important services in their wars with the
Thracians and Bithynians...But this king, so excellent in other respects, was corrupted by a
flatterer named Sostratus, who was a Chalchedonian ..."
Book IV. Chapter LII."So when the Celtic king, Cavarus, came to Byzantium, and showed
himself eager to put an end to the war, and earnestly offered his friendly intervention, both
Prusias and the Byzantines consented to his proposals. And when the Rhodians were
informed of the interference of Cavarus and the consent of Prusias, being very anxious to
secure their own object also, they elected Aridices as ambassador to Byzantium, and sent
Polemocles with him in command of three triremes, wishing, as the saying is, to send the
Byzantines "spear and herald staff at once." Upon their appearance pacification was
arranged, in the year of Cothon, son of Calligiton, high priest in Byzantium. The treaty with the
Rhodians was simple: "The Byzantines will not collect toll from any ship sailing into the
Euxine Pontus; and in that case the Rhodians and their allies are at peace with the
Byzantines." But that with Prusias contained the following provisions: "There shall be peace
and amity forever between Prusias and the Byzantines; the Byzantines shall in no way attack
Prusias, nor Prusias the Byzantines. Prusias shall restore to Byzantines all lands, forts,
populations, and prisoners of war, without ransom; and besides these things, the ships taken
at the beginning of the war, and the arms seized in the fortresses; and also the timbers,
stonework, and roofing belonging to the fort called Hieron" (for Prusias, in his terror of the
approach of Tiboetes, had pulled down every fort which seemed to lie conveniently for him).
"Finally, Prusias shall compel such of the Bithynians as have any property taken from the
farmers of the Byzantine district of Mysia, to restore it to their legitimate owners."
Give back the territories and the places which were stolen, the hostages and the prisoners,
the vessels, the weapons, the wood, the stones and the tiles, give back all that was taken
wrongfully… If it is not some druidry???
At first this crossing of the Celts to Asia seemed to cause only trouble for the inhabitants, but
in the end it inclined to their benefit. The kings tried to put an end to the democracies in the
cities, but the Celts strengthened them, by repelling the cities' oppressors.” (Memnon. History
of Heraclea. Library of Photius, codex 224).
Among the rights of atectoi (cf. the Aithech Tuatha in Ireland, Shudras in India), there was
also, as we have already said, the freedom of the denomination and worship. Never indeed in
Celtic paganism men or women were forced by the word to change their religion as it was the
case therefore for the prince of Mecca called Abu Sufyan (he was probably a Christian of
Manichean obedience before being forced to convert to Islam). It is necessary, on the other
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hand, to admit that Islam has had the merit to keep the main thing of the heathenism relating
to the Kaaba, even if that was by being based on a whole series of good lies (Islam claims
that this shrine was built by Adam and Eve hence the fact that the local populations fulfilled
here their ritual around in a state of complete nakedness in the purest Wiccan style? - and
that Abraham who, if he has perhaps existed, never set foot in this part of the world, it is sure,
built it again after its destruction during the flood in order to perform there, around it, some
circumambulations -7- in ritual clothes, and to kiss the magic idol of black stone - al Hajar Al
Aswad - supposed absorb all sins of the world).
But since we speak about the pilgrimage in Mecca let us return to our sheep precisely. The
Celts preserved the sacred places of non-Celts (the megalithic monuments for example,
portal tombs and standing stones) and had paid attention to the sacredness of their ritual.
The attitude of Galatians in Asia Minor proves it again, particularly the case of Princess
Camma, who, although Celtic, took part for example in the worship of Artemis/Diana (of the
Celtic goddess or demoness or fairy equated by them to this deity).Her history, tragic, told by
Plutarch and Polyaenus, had been evoked s many times in the Greco-Roman world. She had
married the tetrarch Sinatus. Sinorix having made Sinatus perish by betrayal to marry his
widow, of whom he was in love, Camma pretended to grant his desires and led him into
Diana’s temple as to celebrate their union. There, she drank with him a mead cut she had
poisoned and died at the foot of the altar, happy to make him perish with her.Don’t dwell on
this tragic love story, the fact that Camma took part herself in the worship of Artemis Diana
shows well that the religious tolerance is then one of the characteristics of Celtic paganism
and not of the various monolatries. The fact that in the same region of the world and precisely
in Pessinus, half of the 10 high priests of the goddess or demoness or fairy called Cybele by
the Phrygians (on the other hand we are unaware of her name in the interpretatio celtica
which was made of her, Arduinna, Abnoba?)… were of Celtic origin, and also Celtic speaking.
Notes on rough paper found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them into this
place.
Can we really believe what is written on this subject in the web site islamophile. org, because
that resembles much a French president I know interpreting a resolution of UN about Libya,
the number 1973, for example.
In the villages and places not forming part of the Muslim regions [but what it is a Muslim
region? Would be by chance sic- this specification, some taqiyya ?)] it is not forbidden to
non-Muslims practicing their religious rituals, maintaining their churches [and if they are not
some churches?] to construct the buildings they need, because of their population growth
[why this specification?]. This tolerance for people of a different religion from men whose life
is entirely centered on religion, and who got the victory and supremacy thanks to it, is an
extraordinary thing in History [Thank you very much for your kindness: to authorize us to
practice our religion in non-Muslim territories].All what druidism as for it, required from the
overcome or allied non-druidicists, it was to respect the feelings of the druidicists and their
religion. And for this reason they were, of course, to abstain from provoking them.Exercise of
public offices.Non-druidicists in these territories had the right to exert public office as well as
true Celts. Except for the functions of tetrarch, judge (dikastès), leader of the army
(stratophylax), second- in command (hypostratophylax), member of the Council
(Boule).Finally, according to our knowledge. We do not have an example of tetrarch, judge
(dikastès), chief of the army (stratophylax), second-in-command (hypostratophylax), or
member of the Council (Boule), not Galatian, at that time.And except for the posts with purely
druidic religious characteristic of course (various druidic offices or ranks).
With these some exceptions therefore, the various functions of the community (including the
highest ones) could very well be entrusted to non-druidicists, if they fulfilled the requirements
as regards ability, probity or loyalty. Those who harbored an obvious hatred towards
druidicists were nevertheless to be excluded.
N.B. We use intentionally here the word druidicist and not druid or followers of druidism
because the existence in a strict sense of the word druids, in Galatia, is not really attested. It
is spoken there only of dikastes, a Greek word meaning judge.
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To speak about non-right or prohibition in this field is besides an anachronism. The idea that a
rabbi celebrates the mass or that a bishop deals with a mosque would be nonsense today, so
same thing for the Celts of this time. To exert a druidic function, the logic, of course, was at
least to be a druidicist! On the other hand, being a druidicist, in other words, a Celtic-minded
person was in no way a question of bodily race but a question of mental race: it was
necessary to be spiritually Celtic.The problem, of course, is that the list of the functions
fulfilled by the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) in the Celtic society of the time,
was imposing (judge, adviser…)
!---------- ------------------------- ------------------------------------ !
So the modern druidism must therefore distance itself from these ancient practices, or more
exactly, as in Galatia, the non-druidicists must enjoy freedom to work or earn their living,
whether they are employees or working for their own benefit. They must be allowed to enter
all kinds of profit-making or economic activities as well as druidicists. The atectoi or aithech
must be like the three other Celtic social classes (high-knowers, warriors, or
craftsmen/farmers) with regard to the trade transactions, the various types of contracts as well
as the financial affairs. Except for usury, true noblesse * oblige, this practice being generally
condemned. Except in the Bible.Deuteronomy 23, 19-20. “Do not charge a fellow Israelite
interest, whether on money or food or anything else that may earn interest. You may charge a
foreigner interest, but not a fellow Israelite, so that the Lord your God may bless you in
everything you put your hand to in the land you are entering to possess.”And since we are
with the problem of usury, let us add here that you could very well, in the countries which had
fixed a threshold not to be exceeded in this field, to bring financial remuneration of the
stockholders into line with it, even to put an upper limit to the salaries in the same way. The
high knowers of the druidiaction, of the third thousand years, could very well consider that to
earn more four times (or more double?) of the minimum wage in the country, can be
considered tantamount to usury, therefore morally prohibited.
!------------- --------------------------------------------------!
Apart from these exceptions, the atectoi or aithech of lands lately conquered by druidicists,
unlike Shudras in India, must probably enjoy freedom to exert every business, craft industry
or other trade. What will enable them to become Celtized thus and to be integrated in the long
run into the third Celtic function, that of the producers or of the bo-aires (old Celtic boarii?)
Progressive integration, but so well successful that in the ancient Celtic society the Atectoi or
Aithech, unlike the Shudras in India, ended up disappearing and it is so much better. To
make, not physically, but socially speaking, the class of the Atectoi or Aithech disappear, and
not treat them in perpetuity as the poor Indian Shudras, can be one of the aims of every
modern druidicist. On condition, of course, not to use violence as in the case of the
disappearance of the upper middle-class for non-libertarian Communism (Blanquism or
Stalinism).
Transposed in Celtic law a few centuries later, all that will give us the function of Hospitaller or
Briugu.
N.B. The duty of hospitality was always an important component of Celtic ethics, an important
characteristic of the ethics of the trade consisting in being a great lord. In Ireland the brehon
law forced any householder to provide hospitality to free men (for the war prisoners or the
captive, of all kinds, for example as a punishment for a crime, etc. it was to the master, or to
the recipient of the aforementioned forced labor, to take care of that, of course). The man
who was the most bound by this duty of hospitality according to the high-knower of the
druidiaction, was initially the king, who designated a person in charge to deal with all the
problems of supplies that the respect of this duty of hospitality on behalf of his tribe involved
for his tribe. In Ireland this office was called Briugu (later brughad). Lands and herds were
placed at the disposal of the briugu in order to enable him to perform his office. A Briugu did
not have the right to refuse to take care of a free man nor even of his retinue. If it did so, he
lost at once and his title and his office. This office was generally fulfilled either by a member of
the gentry or by a rich commoner who had the necessary abilities. This function was very
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sought as a means of reaching nobility (the status of nemed) but also as a means of
becoming rich quickly. According to Fergus Kelly this office (of Briugu) would have survived in
Ireland until the 16th century.The part of Hospitaller or Briugu is so described in the Bretha
Nemed toísech: “a never-empty cauldron, a dwelling on a public road, and a welcome to
every face.”In the Uraicecht Becc,the briugu is regarded as having the same rank as a lord
(flaith) whose he has twice of lands and possessions. A briugu was to have a “hundredfold”
wealth (cetach) in order to receive his guests fittingly. It was undoubtedly to mean that he was
to have at least a hundred cows (still according to Fergus Kelly). As it was to be difficult to
grant an unbounded hospitality without having a great quantity of possessions and wealth , it
was therefore an indispensable condition to become briugu.The Uraicecht Becc mentions a
briugu of higher rank called briugu leitech, who was to have twice this hundredfold wealth
(thus two hundred cows) and whose house was located at the meeting of three main roads.
A briugu could go up in rank until reaching even a rank equivalent to that of the chief poet or
of the little king. He was then called chief briugu (ollamh briugad).
To those who hasten to see in this so fast Celtization of hearts and minds an odious racist
dictatorship, I can only answer that.What remained logical nevertheless is that the following
posts or offices had been reserved for druidicists.The supreme responsibility of the
community of druidicists (king or vergobret, president, primate principatus in Caesar-,
tetrarch, stratophylax, hypostratophylax, etc.). Normal, no ?Arbitration to be done between
druidicists (or between druidicists and non-druidicists ?)The management of alms or of
legacies and donations to Celtic-minded religious persons.
We cannot appoint any of the gods our heirs, except those whom we are permitted to
appoint.... for instance the Mars of Celtica...” (Ulpian. Title XXII). It is possible to widen!
Note found by the children of Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them into this place of the
manuscript.Let us remind besides by the way, of the fact that in the original ancient Celtic
society , and a little like today, everybody had the right to be armed, even the farmers, at least
according to Venceslas Kruta (“It is in this environment of armed farmers, for whom the
carrying a sword was besides probably especially the expression of their status of free men,
and who formed a true rural militia, that the human resources of the great expansion were
recruited” (The Celts).
There was to be, of course, like nowadays besides, some limitations here and there in certain
chiefdoms, but the principle was that sales possessions or carrying arms were free (you can,
of course, think that it must be differently today. Our readers are perfectly free to have their
opinion on this subject).
But , of course, you cannot ask men or women who are not particularly attached to a
community, to fight for it. Especially when they are members of a religion which preaches only
submission to God or the Demiurge and love for others or pacifism, like Islam, Christianity,
Judaism. Unlike the Celts who too, at times, precisely rebelled against the dictatorship of the
god-or-demons and are not pacifist (at all cost), but peaceful. Cf. the battle for the capture of
Talantio (Tailtiu, a personification of the cultivated land matching the goddess-or-demoness,
or fairy if this word is preferred, called Rosemartha on the Continent).
We can, on the other hand, be peaceful (to yearn for peace) without being a pacifist (at all
cost). The pacifist indeed, put peace (the absence of war) above everything i.e., above, for
example, justice and freedom. No good can, in the eyes of a pacifist, justify a war. And it is
there the whole difference between a peaceful person and a pacifist : both yearn for peace,
love peace; but when the pacifist puts peace above all, the peaceful one understands too that
certain situations can call for a war.Was the war waged against the party of the national and
socialist German workers (Nazis) during the Second World War, justified? Peace turned out
to be the necessary condition for the establishment of all the rest. But if freedom exists no
longer? But if injustice becomes the rule? There are therefore unfortunately right and
necessary wars.
167
In short, the non-druidicists or the pacifists at all costs must therefore be exempted from
military service. Or from every function involving a carrying arm. It would be unjust and
ineffective to do the opposite.
*That of the heart or of the mind.
La Rochelle 01 14 2009.
168
NEW REMARKS OF PETER DELACRAU
ON THE WAY IN WHICH THE CELTIZATION TOOK PLACE
And inserted by his children into this place of the manuscript.
Soon after, as if the spoils of mortals were too mean for him, he turned his thoughts to the
temples of the immortal gods, saying, with a profane jest, that “the gods, being rich, ought to
be liberal to men." He suddenly, therefore, directed his march towards Delphi, regarding
plunder more than religion, and caring for gold more than for the wrath of the deities, " who,"
he said, " stood in no need of riches, as being accustomed rather , to bestow them on
mortals."……
Brennus, when he came within sight of the temple, deliberated for some time, whether he
should at once make an attempt upon it, or should allow his soldiers, wearied with their
march, a night to refresh themselves. ..
Brennus had sixty-five thousand infantry, selected from his whole army; of the Delphians
there were not more than four thousand; in utter contempt of whom, Brennus, to rouse the
courage of his men, pointed to the vast quantity of spoil before them, declaring that the
statues, and four-horse chariots, of which a large number were visible at a distance, were
made of solid gold, and would prove greater prices when they came to be weighed than they
were in appearance....
Amid this contest between the two, the priests of all the temples, as well as the priestesses
themselves, with their hair loose, and with their decorations and fillets, rushed, trembling and
frantic, into the front ranks of the combatants, exclaiming that " the god was come; that they
had seen him leap down into his temple through the opening roof; that, while they were all
humbly imploring aid of the deity, a youth of extraordinary beauty, far above that of mortals,
and two armed virgins, coming from the neighboring temples of Diana and Minerva, met
them; that they had not only perceived them with their eyes, but had also heard the sound of
a bow and the rattling of arms’; and they therefore conjured them with the strongest
entreaties, " not to delay, when the gods were leading them on, to spread slaughter among
the enemy, and to share the victory with the powers of heaven." Incited by these
exhortations, they all rushed eagerly to the field of battle, where they themselves also soon
perceived the presence of the deity; for a part of the mountain, broken off by an earthquake,
overwhelmed a host of the Galatians and some of the densest bodies of the enemy were
scattered abroad, not without wounds, and fell to the earth.”
Justin. Book XXIV. Chapters VI to VIII. Summary of the philippic and universal histories by
Trogue Pompey (Pompeius Trogus who was Celtic besides, a Celt of “collaborator” type).
At first this crossing of the Gauls to Asia seemed to cause only trouble for the inhabitants,
but in the end it inclined to their benefit. The kings tried to put an end to the democracies in
the cities, but the Celts strengthened them, by repelling the cities' oppressors.” (Memnon.
History of Heraclea. In the Library of Photius, codex 224)
Let us no longer speak here about the case of the territories subjected by princes
authentically Celtic from the point of view of the ethnic group or of the spirituality, but atheistic,
agnostic, or at least relatively indifferent to religious questions. They were to let their subjects
do what they wanted in this field (except Brennus of course). According to Strabo certain
Celts and particularly the Galicians in Spain were straightforwardly atheistic. Is it possible or is
it rather a lack of nuance of the thought of Strabo unable to understand the subtleties of some
Druidic Schools of dikastes. However here is his quotation. “Some say the Callaicans have no
god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north offer sacrifices to a nameless god
at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the doors of their houses, and whole
households dance in chorus and keep it up all night” (Strabo, Geography, book III, chapter
IV).But was it the same thing with the Celts of dagolitos type, i.e., very religious, like
Ambicatus, the most frequent case?The general rule was to be, for the followers of non-
druidic religions living on territories recently controlled by Celts (the Atectoi or Aithech,
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Shudras in India), peace having returned or having become established; that they were to
have as many rights as true Celts (of race or of mind) with some exceptions, of course, and
as many duties (there too except for some exceptions). It is hard to imagine sovereigns like
Ambicatus or Cavarus acting differently.N.B. Transposed today, this “druidic” peace should
also, of course, apply to our agnostic even atheistic sisters or brothers, let us not do like the
Muslims with their dhimmis.
What are therefore the duties to which the Celtic community lately settled urged the non-
druidicists of its territory, in compensation for the rights it let them enjoy (right to life, right to
work, right to have their own religion, etc.)?
- To respect the worship practices of the newcomers, of course.
- To respect the main leanings of druidic ethics.
- To help in the good performance of the community by contributing to the financing of the
duties of which they were exempted, for various reasons, all more obvious than the others.
Military service (the blood tribute) atebertas or offerings to the Celtic god-or-demons, even
maintenance of the places of druidic worship (normal, no?).
- To respect the religious feelings of the druidicistic newcomers.The first duty that the non-
druidicists were to accept was therefore, of course, that to respect the feelings of the Celts of
race or mind who lived from now on with them or beside them, see the case of the Galatians.
They were probably not allowed to insult them by calling them Barbarians; nor to speak about
druidism in a non-objective way; nor to support beliefs and ideas hostile to the druidic
principles; nor to provoke them by vaunting or practicing in an ostentatious way, in front of
them, some rites or rituals (monuments, inscriptions, symbols, etc.) made obsolete
(unsuitable) by the evolution of the situation. And they were probably to refrain publicly from
what was contrary to the basic values of druidic ethics; only non-observance by them of the
secondary points of druidic ethics was to be tolerated (so that all the elements of the new
society, thus formed, can live more or less in peace and harmony). Discretion therefore
which, rather strangely, matches in fact the open and positive secularism characteristic of our
modern states.The second duty of the atectoi/aithech or non-druidicistic overcome (see the
case of the Shudras in India) was undoubtedly to conform to the laws or to the legal rules
governing the new community of druidicists , they were to follow these new laws.On the other
hand, it was not requested from non-druidicists, apparently, to give up what their religion
tolerated or sanctified as regards personal and social status; for example, in the field of
marriage (hence the upholding of polygamy or polyandry in Great Britain for example). Even
if druidism disapproved some of these practices, of course. The Celtic community admitted for
non-druidicists what they regarded themselves as normal, without forbidding it for them or
blaming them for that.But in the Middle Ages the Church after having condemned the
remarriages of the widowers or of the widows, went even as far as prohibiting the marriage
with kinship to the seventh degree, or between godfather and goddaughter, godmother and
godson. But mind your own business!The druidicist community as for it did not interfere, for
example, in no way, in the businesses of the Pictish Paleolithic who married a woman of his
close relationship (like his cousin or his mother-in-law); nor of those of the Ligurian who
married his niece, not more than of the Neolithic people who had several wives jointly; since
the latter (the women) did not see anything wrong in these practices.But apart from these
affairs of personal or social status, the non-druidicists had, just like the druidicists to comply
with the precepts or the principles of universal value of druidic ethics; concerning blood or
money affairs, and so on… In short, the non-druidicists were to respect the laws and customs
of the Celtic community, while not being opposed in a frontal way to its ethics or to its
spirituality.
TAXES.
There was to be three main categories of taxes in this kind of society formed by the
coexistence of Celts of origin and overcome Neolithic people. Even four if we count the
tributes other than that which was paid in heads of cattle.
The tiopritom of the Larzac tablet (eiabi tiopritom biietutu) was to be a tax on individuals. It did
not have a fix amount apparently. Obviously composed of tio- and of the substantive pritom in
which Leo Fleuriot recognizes, in tio the Sanskrit tya “price, revenge” and in pritom the root
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kwreih “to buy.” Middle Welsh prid “payment, purchase price, value,” Old Irish crith
“purchase.”
The boroma was undoubtedly, in the beginning, a tax (on the land or on the dwellings of the
non-druidicists in the territory?) payable in cattle at the time, hence its name, by the overcome
people or their heirs, in exchange for their protection by the second function. It was therefore
up to the leaders of the community to fix its amount. Example Brian Borou in Ireland.
The decametina was an economic tax. It generally resulted in the payment of a tenth of
harvests or products. Perhaps was it also paid at the beginning by original Celts, in kind.
Extended to non-Celts its goal was simple: to help or contribute to the supporting of the
community of victors: warriors and druids).
The most elementary justice imposed nevertheless on the non-druidicists to contribute in
another way to the expenses of the defense and of the protection of the community.To pay off
these three or four taxes (including those paid by the original Celts) was therefore to be for a
non-druidicist, a way of showing his loyalty , as well as a financial substitution to the military
service (the blood tribute) from which he was then exempted.
One insists today on the fact that the leader in charge of a community (for example Cavarus,
for example Ambicatus, for example Teutovalos or Tuathal Techtmar) must take into account
the ability to pay tax, of those who must discharge this duty , therefore to avoid overburden
them with taxes. Let us say that those who have the means must pay, each one according to
one’s fortune, and that the poor or destitute Atectoi/Aithech must be exempted from them
(therefore unlike the case of the Indian Shudras). But at the time, of course, the unfortunate
overcome people were to be crushed under the tributes imposed by the victors (Vae
Victebo!).
The fact of becoming a druidicist put a stop by definition at this tribute (these taxes); since
those concerned only the overcome non-Celts, in exchange for the fact to have had their life
spared or in exchange for the various protections they enjoyed regarding the other tribes. The
atectos (known as aithech in Ireland, shudra in India) therefore disappeared thus and became
a Celtized person, member of the third function, that of the free producers (boaire in Ireland,
boarii in Old Celtic). Or of the second or the first we could add today. On the other hand, he
was still to continue discharging taxes concerning also Celts from pure stock, like the tithe
(decametina).
La Rochelle 01 21 2009.
BLOOD MONEY AND BLOOD TRIBUTE.
As we could see , druidic ethics imposed on the hearted or minded Celts (Celtized) to
intervene armed if necessary in order to defend the weak and the oppressed, to fight against
injustice, or to defend friends in the difficulty.
On account of their trait of simplicity and straightforwardness, they easily come together in
large numbers, because they always share in the vexation of those of their neighbors whom
they think wronged” (Strabo. Book IV, chapter IV).
And closer to us: “They readily take in hand the cause of the oppressed. They indeed have, to
the highest degree, the feeling of equity, right and honor. They can’t tolerate that a man
breaks his word. Reputation of justice of some of their tribes as the Volques Tectosages who
lived beyond the Rhine, or of kings like Cavarus, spread far away“.(Albert Grenier.)
Humanitarian duty to intervene before the word existed from which non-druidicists were
exempted by definition since non-druidicists precisely. Especially those whose religion was a
pacifist religion of love like Judaism Christianity or Islam, nowadays.However, a community,
whatever it is, can be defended only by those who believe in the rightness of its cause, or in
the validity of its ideals. It has always been and from time immemorial considered unthinkable
that somebody is forced to risk his life for an idea that he regards as wrong, or for spirituality
with which he does not agree. The religious designs of these non-druidicists could besides
very well; what is perfectly logical and comprehensible (a little like in the case of Judaism or of
Islam today, but Christians are more hypocritical, more liar, see for instance the speech of the
general Bouchard commander of NATO to justify his intensive air raids on Tripoli and Sirte in
2011: “we do not wage war, we protect the civilians! ”: difficult to be more cynical) to forbid
them to fight quite simply, including for right causes. It was not the case of the Celts since
they were really persuaded that death was only the middle of a long, very long, life.Hence the
development of the mercenary armies among them, even for purely secular reasons. See for
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example the Libyan war and the famous historical novel by Flaubert entitled Salammbo: the
crucifixion of the mercenary beneath Autaritus in - 237 beneath the walls of the future Tunis.
The outlets the mercenary trade offered were probably at the origin of the settlements of
Transalpine Senones near the Syracusan trading post of Ancona. And it is probably there that
the Celtic mercenaries who formed part, with some Iberians, of the Syracusan task force sent
in - 369/368 into Greece, were recruited. We do not have other information as explicit on the
Celtic mercenary trade in Italy during the fourth century before our era, but it had to be
flourishing. And it is perhaps in its context that is to be situated the famous embassy of the
Adriatic Celts (to Alexander in - 335) who, if they were really of this origin, could be only
Cisalpine Senones. The Celts had therefore entered , as soon as the fourth century before
our era, the main markets of the mercenary trade of which the customers were the economic
powers which did not have a military force matching their ambitions. Case of Syracuse and of
other cities of Great-Greece. It was also the case of Carthage. That became the case of the
Hellenistic kingdoms when the Macedonian military core was no longer sufficient to continue
the fierce fight which opposed the ones against the other the heirs to Alexander. There were
therefore probably Celtic mercenaries involved in the fighting that the diadochi fought as soon
as the last decades of the fourth century before our era. And it was probably them who were
behind the news or information necessary to the preparation of the “Great Expedition” of -
280. It was too well designed and organized to be the spontaneous rush of adventurers
launched in the blind search for lands and riches, without clear ideas about the goal to be
reached, its interest, or the means necessary to achieve it; that we are usually described. This
“Great expedition” had as immediate result the sudden injection on a market in full expansion,
of several tens of thousands of courageous soldiers, apparently well trained and, furthermore,
less expensive than Greek mercenaries.According to the information we have, the pay of a
Celt mercenary could come to a gold stater per man for a several-month campaign, while a
Greek soldier as for him received the same amount for only one month. The use of coins was
spread therefore among transalpine Celts. And it is, of course, not a chance if it was precisely
the coins which were most used in the payments of mercenaries (particularly the Macedonian
gold stater, the “Philippus,” and the issues of Alexander the great) that will be used as models
for the first Celtic coinage.The Hellenistic sovereigns took advantage immediately of the
godsend: Antigonus Gonatas enlisted the survivors of the battle of Lysimacheia, Nicomedes
of Bithynia the troops of Leonorius and Lutarius crossing the straits. In 277/276 before our
era, four thousand Celts served Ptolemy Philadelphus who, fearing their uprising, made them
perish in a Nile’s island. From now on, the mentions of Celtic contingents in the Hellenistic
troops abound, and we can consider that they are members of their normal numbers. Their
courage is famous so much so that, when Pyrrhus overcomes in - 274 Antigonus’s troops, of
which Celtic rearguard had been made killed without moving back, while the Macedonian
infantry, on the other hand, passed on his side; he will consider this victory over the Celts as
his most glorious feat of arms.Tens of thousands Celtic mercenaries fought therefore, and
shed blood over all the battle fields in the Mediterranean. Adventurers by nature, they
embarked from time to time on operations for their own benefit, or rebelled, as in Megara
close to Athens in - 265; where one of their women was perhaps stripped on this occasion of
her ankle rings; made in Bohemia or Bavaria, and found about thirty kilometers from there, in
the filling of a well of lsthmia close to Corinth. Indeed, these contingents of mercenaries, who
generally included two to four thousand armed men, moved with their wives and their
children, therefore a total from five to ten thousand people; as well as with a quantity of
wagons which transported all their wealth, and were probably also used as home at the time
of their movements. That was a lot of people, who lived in the direct contact of the universe of
the Mediterranean cities, entirely new for people come from the villages of Central Europe
(Venceslas Kruta. Revista de Guimarães, Especial Volume, I, Guimarães, 1999, pp. 51-85).
La Rochelle 01 27 2009.
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Handwritten notes found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau, and which these latter have
hesitated much to insert into this place; considering its contradictory nature compared to what
precedes. i.e., the exemption of military service for those who are members of religious
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communities having only peace in sight, not having the same values to defend or promote
than the druidicists. In these notes indeed, what is considered, it is a kind of obligatory civilian
or military service for them.
THE TRIBUTE IN MEN: MILITARY SERVICE FOSTERAGE AND HOSTAGES.
At this time, Cornwall was to pay Ireland every five years a tribute; this custom had been
established following an unfortunate war… When the day was come, Morholt arrived on a
vessel and landed in Tintagel, he brought back from the country three-hundred-fifteen-year-
old boys to act as servants at the court of Ireland; and as many maidens who were locked up
in workshops in which they were to work three hundred and sixty-five days a year for the king
of Ireland “(Tristan and Iseult).See also the tribute that the gigantic wyverns or anguipedics
(known as andernas on the Continent, fomorians in Gaelic language) demanded from the
tribe of goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia) in the Irish legends: two thirds of their
wheat, of their milk, and even of their children.
The taking hostages is indeed as old as the hills of the sidh. We find traces of this practice
twenty-seven centuries before our era in Egypt, in the Middle East and in Persia, then in
Rome.Very early indeed, the States made the system of hostages a means of diplomacy and
of government. Provided by a clause of treaties, they guaranteed the fulfillment of the
obligations imposed on overcome, their submission, as well as the neutrality of neighbors,
and even the loyalty of allies. These diplomatic hostages were generally treated as
distinguished guests in the country of the victors. Their lot resembled in no way that of
prisoners. They were indeed generally members of the ruling families or of the dignitaries of
the States in question, which vouched on their honor and their possessions for the good
fulfillment of the treaties.This definition, of course, was gradually changed : today the word
designates the individual who is captured and who is used as a means of pressure to get
something or to safeguard oneself against possible reprisals. The status of hostage therefore
evolved in the time from “guarantor of a promise” to that of “a bargaining chip.” They are
terrorist groups which organize this taking of hostages for political reasons. Sometimes also
they are villainous acts which are the fact of the organized crime. From the point of view of
international law, the taking of hostages is prohibited since 1949 by Geneva Convention in the
military or civil conflicts. They are also contrary to the Convention of Human rights.
It is obvious that our ancestors too, have practiced on a large scale this system during
Antiquity, even beyond. The very name of Niall Noigiallach, last pagan king of Ireland, means
Niall with the nine hostages.O'Rahilly suggested that this nickname was linked to the taking of
hostages, carried out among the sons of the nine Ulidian kings (of Ulster). This people seems
to match, for the historical period in question, the kingdom of Airgillia (Airgíalla = hostage
givers), which was a vassal of the Ui Neill after having been vassal of the Ulaid.
After their victory and their conquest, the victorious leaders were, of course, to demand that
were handed over to them some hostages in order to guarantee peace.
And druids as for them were, perhaps, to also take in fosterage at home some boys of school
age, i.e., approximately seven years old (the nursery school did not exist at the time); in order
to train them in their science, and to have with them, if not some successors, at least some
helpers or some assistants.
The accelerated Celtization of these overcome peoples, and particularly of the Ligurian or of
the Germanic ones, is therefore explained undoubtedly mainly by the importance of the
military service owed by the overcome people to their victors; and by the taking in fosterage,
by the druids, of the most hopeful children in overcome tribes.
The victorious Celtic leaders could only accept that young people of the overcome peoples
join their ensigns, and from now on carry arms for their benefit. There were well Jews to join
the armies of Alexander the Great! As regards this military service, that was to begin when
they were approximately fourteen years old.
Without counting, considering the tolerance always shown by true Celt of heart and mind, that
such a blood tribute was quickly viewed by the overcome people as a means of social
advancement .The case of Vercingetorix is exemplary in this respect (he was very young sent
as a hostage among Romans, and even more precisely to the divine Julius Caesar). That of
the future saint Patrick was less conclusive (he was put in the family of the druid who
managed the herds of the king having plundered his countryNiall?? in the wood of Foclut: a
person by the name Milchu).
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La Rochelle 02 03 2009.
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We cannot say with accuracy now how that occurred 3000 years ago, but here, however, how
these taking hostages happened in the Ottoman Empire a few centuries later.
At the beginning, recruitment of janissaries and devshirme were two very different
things.Janissaries were children captured in the new Christian villages occupied by the
Ottoman Army as it moved forward: in Hungary, the Balkans, etc. These children then
teenagers therefore grew within the army. They were in a way some cadets (like me when I
was young).What, of course, also matches the practice of the hostages of the joining up or of
the mercenary trade we have just evoked. As for the fosterage, it is true that the case of the
druid named Milliuc learning the rudiments of druidism to the future saint Patrick is rather
disconcerting but it is important here to point out that everything in this story remains very
hypothetical.
Beginning with the exact site of Foclut forest where the future St Patrick spent the main part
of his 6 years of captivity and which he mentions in his “confession.” The traditional
localization of this place does not match the information left by Patrick.What is sure, on the
other hand, it is that he had kept a rather ambiguous memory of his training at Milliuc’s to
consider his practices as a fourth-rate druidry.
As regards devshirme (gathering or harvest in Turkish language), it was not the same
process, and its aim was different, more civilian. Moreover it occurred within the Empire and
in times of peace. It would match perhaps more the notion of fosterage considering the
brilliant destiny which sometimes expected some of these young people (Patrick,
Skanderbeg).
Both logic nevertheless ended up becoming confused, and this, rather quickly.
The recruitment of janissaries, initially done by keeping a prisoner of war on five (pencik), was
done then through the system of the devshirme or obligatory draft of the young children in the
families of overcome peoples.To describe the janissaries purely and simply as “slave soldiers”
would be a mistake. The title of kul which was ascribed to them, matched an honorable and
not bringing disgrace function. Still in the 17th century, to be recognized as a kul was not less
worthy than to be simply a subject of the Sultan. Once the strangeness of devshirme passed,
many families themselves proposed their children for what seemed then to be a good career.
See the case of the great Albanian national hero, Skanderbeg.
Parents as well Christian as Muslim went even as far as to pay bribes so that their children
too are accepted in this corporation. There exist written documents which witness that many
janissaries kept in touch with their original family.
This tribute in men fed the elite infantry or cavalry as well as the civilian or domestic stewards.
Devshirme initially concerned the young people from eight to twenty years old, coming from
peasant families; individuals in good health, but without education rather than some young
townsmen trained in “street school“. Families with only one son were exempted from it and
the Jews too. Most part of the Greeks escaped it, because the majority of those who spoke
Greek were then in the cities or inhabited islands. Devshirme led concretely to recruit a child
every forty houses; the levying happened about every five years. At its peak the system went
as far to concern from 1000 to 3000 young people each year, outside the ordinary recruitment
of almost 8000 slaves.Devshirme began with an edict of the Sultan. An officer of the rank of
colonel at least, with authorization letters, and accompanied by several sürücü (“leading
guards“), as well as by a secretary with a certain number of uniforms, went to the places in
which the clergy had the obligation to gather male children.Two lists were then drawn up.One
was entrusted to a sürücü who then escorted the recruits to Istanbul. There, most intelligent
were sent as iç oglan or palace boys in the schools of the Sultan, where they were intended,
for luckiest, to high posts.The rest, the other list, the acemi oglan or “trainees” were put in
houses of honorably known men in order to do there the first stage of their education.
The selection process, supervised by a committee of examiners, was an astonishing mixture
of new and antiquated ideas. On a side a belief in the science “of physiognomy,’ which
affirmed that the nature and the intelligence could be deduced from bodily appearance, and
on the other side some intellectual or mental examinations resembling our modern IQ test.
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We know more, of course, about the education of the elite of iç oglans than about that of the
common of acemi oglans intended for the janissaries corps, but the principles were similar.
There were schools in Bursa, Edirne, Istanbul and Galata, where the young people studied
during two to seven years while being subjected to the hard discipline that the kapi agasi or
chief of white eunuchs, imposed. They learned initially some rudiments of Islam and general
knowledge. The dominant direction of their later studies depended on what best appropriate
to them was; it was either religious, or administrative or military. There was also Arabic,
Persian and Turkish literature, horsemanship, javelin throwing, archery, wrestling,
weightlifting, as well as music for the most gifted. The emphasis was put on honesty, loyalty,
good manners as well as self-control. Best of the iç oglans went to the upper or lower houses
of the Sultan palace, while the others were appointed to the cavalry of the kapu kullari
( slaves of the Sublime Porte or of the High Gate).
By comparison with this quasi-chivalrous instruction, that of the ordinary acemi oglan was
completely military with a crushing insistence on obedience.
Devshirme was practically stopped in 1648, and in Europe the ultimate attempt failed in 1703.
Consequently, the independent source of recruitment became the Tatars of Ukraine until the
annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783.
The best known and most usual emblem of janissaries was the copper cauldron that the
company (orta) kept preciously. The daily ration of men was prepared in this cauldron and
they gathered around it in order to have their meal. To knock over the cauldron was a sign of
rebellion and to take refuge near it was equivalent running away in a sanctuary (therefore
enjoying a kind of asylum right). In the battle, the company cauldron was used as a rallying
point. But if the cauldron was lost, the officers who were charged to defend it fell in disgrace,
and the whole company lost the favor to take part in the parades with the other regiments.
But let us leave there all these Turkish scenes, as for us, what was important for us it is the
tribute in men such as it has been a long time practiced by the victorious Celts, the ancient
Celtic devshirme (hostages, fosterage, and Celtization) and its re-examined and corrected
modern version (a military service offering a real opportunity for social advancement).
What we can deduce from all that as regards the Celtic conquests and the Celtization which
followed, it is that a kind of Celtic devshirme had to exist. There are traces of it in the legend
of Tristan and Iseult.
Because there also existed….
The draft of Peter DeLaCrau stops unfortunately here!
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DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ATECTAI/ATECTOI AND DHIMMI IN ISLAMIC LANDS (DAR AL
ISLAM).
The word dhimmi, usually translated by allied or protected, designates in fact a non-Muslim
subject in a State ruled by Muslim Law (Sharia). This term is the genitive derived from the
word dhimmah, commitment, pact, obligation, which determines the relationship between a
dhimmi and such a State.The word dhimmi applies mainly to people of the book known as the
Bible (Ahl Al-kitab) and it is there a basic difference with the ancient druidism. Because in the
case of the Celts this pattern applied to all the religions, very definition of paganism. And in
the case of modern druidism that applies even to all the possible absences of religion:
atheism or agnosticism.
Muslim jurists consider well the murder of a dhimmi is a capital or major sin, but differ on the
question of the punishment to impose on the culprit if he is Muslim. The jumhûr (majority) of
jurists whose Ash-Shafi’i and Ahmad think that a Muslim cannot be liable to the death
sentence for the murder of a dhimmi. See the so stated hadith: “A Muslim cannot be killed for
a non-believer “(reported by Ahmad, Al-Bukhari, An-Nasa’i, Abu Dawud and At-Tirmidhi about
Ali’s hadith, as well as in Al-Muntaqa and his comment).
Tafsir by Peter DeLaCrau. There is here from Islam more than a crime but a fault. We are the
opposite of the ancient druidic Law on the subject which specified all the contrary, what is
more than morally superior therefore since it is quite simply basic wisdom: it was in order to
avoid the reprisals of the tribe of which the victim was a member. “Among them, man is
punished more rigorously for the murder of a stranger than for that of a fellow citizen: in the
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first case, death, in the second exile only. Those they honor most are the conquerors who
have expanded the national territory. The doors of their houses are never closed, etc.”
(Nicholas of Damascus. Collection of remarkable customs. Fragment preserved by
Stobaeus).Considering our position on the death sentence or on the Jewish law of retaliation,
our druidism to us, escapes such a contradiction, such an affirmative action, very
characteristic of the people of one book: the double standard!
What we do not understand very well either, we uns, high knowers of the druidiaction of the
third thousand-year century, it is the detail which appears at the end of the line 29 of the
chapter IX in the Very Holy Quran. This chapter IX of the Holy Quran is besides one of the
rare suras which is not introduced by the expression, “In the name of God forgiving and
merciful.” Incidentally, why such a wording since it is God who is supposed speak through
archangel Gabriel?It is indeed an omission that Muslim commentators explain differently.
You shall kill (qatiloo) those who do not believe either in Allah or in the last Day, who don't
prohibit what Allah and his messenger have prohibited, and follow not the religion of truth,
among those who received the Scripture…. until (hatta) they pay the due tax (aljizyata) by
their own hands (an yadin) after having been (wahum)… SAGHIROONA.”And there
translations differ.
Humiliated.”
Debased.”
Being brought low.”
Disgraced.”So humiliation or not? Below the opinion of the French Jean-Pierre Peroncel-
Hugoz in his raft of Mohamed.Let us return to this “happy society” that, it is told us from all
sides, Muslim Iberia was. The former Christian or Muslim chronicles, however, show that
under several caliphs, the splendors of Granada or Cordoba were accompanied by a strict
application of Islamic law (sharia) with its trail of injustices. Tarragona, Toledo, Seville inter
other cities; had even in the eighth or ninth century, their Christian communities decimated.
With each rebellion of non-Muslim subjects, without speaking about the raids on land not
subjected to Islam, the slave markets in Spain became peopled with Christians… The history
of Islamic Spain and Sicily is sprinkled with executions of Christians,
-accused by Muslims witnesses to have blasphemed against Islam like the famous martyrs of
Cordoba Perfectus or St Eulogius.[an accusations once again more and more heard in courts
even if they do not always finish, fortunately, by convictions, see the Houellebecq case in
2002* see the case of the Holy Quran on which an inhabitant of Strasbourg had urinated, see
the equating of Islam to Nazism and of Quran to Mein Kampf done by Geert Wilders in the
Netherlands in 2011; on the other hand, among our friends and allies of the great Pakistani
democracy it was not the same thing for the unfortunate Asia Bibi in 2010]
-and of public session of payment by people of the Book of their specific tax: the jizya. Under
the “legal” boos and blows of the Muslim rabble.
* Michel Houellebecq had shared his opinion on Islam: “The most idiot religion.” He was
perhaps besides right, but in what concerns us we especially hold not to finish like Afrikaners
in Zimbabwe or South Africa: a visible minority being the subject of an affirmative action,
positive or negative according to the point of view where you place yourself, but, however,
official, and whose Creole language is ridiculed by anti-racists. Even if we do not want to
return either to the situation of Muslim Spain, which would form a dramatic intellectual relapse
or regression; the ideal being rather the one so described by Strabo:
Some say the Callaicans have no god, but the Celtiberians and their neighbors on the north
offer sacrifices to a nameless god at the seasons of the full moon, by night, in front of the
doors of their houses, and whole households dance in chorus and keep it up all night”
(Strabo, Geography, book III, chapter IV).In any event, what we do not understand it is the
need for discharging personally and while being thus humiliated, of such a tax. In what
concerns us, we are convinced that when Atectai/Aithech Tuatha paid tribute to their Celtic
victors, formerly, they were in no way forced to do it after being thus treated.
Below the moral or more, commitment, to which all the dhimmis were to subscribe in lands of
Islam (dar al Islam), called Pact of Umar II, and which is the basis of every Muslim legislation
on dhimmis.
N.B.This second Umar should not be confused with the first one, who was the second caliph.
The majority of historians doubt also strongly the authenticity of such a document because
woe to the vanquished, uae victebo, it is generally victors who write history, and not the
contrary. This document is nevertheless a good illustration of the state of mind of Muslims in
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that time. The exact opposed process of what we called “Celtization” of bodies of hearts and
of minds.
Al-Tartushi (Siraj al-Muluk, pages 229-230).
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, this is a letter from the Christians...to the servant of Allah,
Umar, and Commander of the Faithful....
When you came into this country, we asked you for safe conduct (aman) for ourselves, our
progeny, our property, and the people of our community, and we undertook the following
obligations towards you:We shall build no longer, in our cities or in their neighborhood, new
monasteries, Churches, or monks' cells, or hermitage, nor shall we repair, by day or by night,
such of them as fall in ruins or are situated in the quarters of the Muslims.We shall keep our
gates wide open for passersby and travelers. We shall give board and lodging to all Muslims
who pass our way for three days.We shall not give shelter in our churches or in our dwellings
to any spy, nor hide him from the Muslims.We shall not teach the Quran to our children.We
shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of
our kin from entering Islam if they wish it.We shall show respect towards the Muslims, and we
shall rise from our seats when they wish to sit.We shall not seek to resemble the Muslims in
what concerns their garments, the qalansuwa (bonnet), the turban, the footwear, or the
parting of the hair.We shall not speak as they do, nor shall we adopt their appellation
(kunyas).We shall not mount on saddles, nor shall we gird swords nor have any kind of arms
nor carry them on our persons.We shall not engrave Arabic inscriptions on our seals.We shall
not sell fermented drinks.We shall clip the fronts of our heads.We shall always dress in the
same way wherever we may be, and we shall bind the zunar round our waists.We shall not
display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims.We shall use
clappers in our churches only very softly.We shall not raise our voices when following our
dead. We shall not show lights on any of the roads of the Muslims or in their markets. We
shall not bury our dead near the Muslims.We shall not take slaves who have belonged to
Muslims.We shall not build houses overtopping the houses of the Muslims.
(When I brought the letter to Umar, may God be pleased with him, the latter added, "We shall
not strike a Muslim.”)
We accept these conditions for ourselves and for the people of our community, and in return
we receive safe conduct.
If we in any way violate these undertakings for which we ourselves stand surety, we forfeit our
covenant [our dhimma], and we become liable to the penalties for contumacy and sedition.
Umar replied: “Sign what they ask, but add two clauses and impose them in addition to those
which they have already undertaken. They are: "They shall not buy anyone made a prisoner
by the Muslims," and "Whoever strikes a Muslim with deliberate intent shall forfeit the
protection of this pact."
La Rochelle 02 13 2009.
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DRUIDIC RELIGION
(evolution and revolutions).
Reda version druidism, by accepting the main Neolithic worships, opened other paths, and
particularly those of the feeling or intention, thus making druidism a true religion of
salvation.The worship of Hornunnos achieving by its annual sacrifice the universal redemption
is added to the Aryan ideal of the warrior reaching Heaven directly while dying in action. With
him a larger number of human beings can yearn for the salvation and, to reach it, the fervor of
the feeling and the resources of the divine sovereignty or the right of reprieve of this great god
or demon, replace the hard military discipline characteristic of the path of warriors up to that
point.This evolution takes place parallel to the Celtization of the Neolithic peoples having
preceded them; it is marked by a significant development of the idea of the merit of the great
soul/minds, or of the salvation linked to the compassion of these Anatiomaroi (great
initiates).A little as in the case of the buddhakshetra.
Buddhakshetra, land of Buddha or field of Buddha, is a Buddhist word which designates a
realm of the universe in which a given Buddha exerted his activity or influence. According to
the Mahavamsa, the realm of his earthly life is the jati-khetta, which can be impure or mixed,
as our world which is the jati-khetta of the Shakyamuni Buddha (the sage of the Shakyas).
The realm in which its teaching is spread is the ana-khetta. The field in which his wisdom and
his knowledge spread is the visaya-khetta, considered as unlimited. The last two are pure
lands resulting from his fulfillment and expressing his qualities; those who have an affinity for
them are reborn in them. Still according to the Mahavamsa, a Buddhakshetra is equivalent to
61 billion universes. The concept is particularly developed in the Mahayana, in the Lotus and
the Vimalakirti sutras as in those which are devoted to certain Buddhas like Amitabha, whose
pure land is best known by far. It is indeed in the center of the beliefs and practices of the
today Pure Land current, one of most important in Buddhism.Although some texts describe
pure lands like realms distant from our world, the Lotus and the Vimalakirti affirm that they are
born in the very impure world around a bodhisattva, by virtue of the purity of his mind; they
are made up of the beings that rise spiritually thanks to his teaching. According to these
sutras, there is a qualitative difference between the pure lands of the different Buddhas. The
pure land of Amitabha itself gives way according to some authors to that of Padmavati. The
Tiantai or Tendai currents, strongly influenced by the Lotus sutra, consider four pure lands
which man reaches according to his level of awareness: the land of the common dwelling,
accessible to everybody ; the land of the skillful means and of the other, accessible to the
listeners, to the pratyekabuddhas and the bodhisattvas in the first stages of their practice; the
land of the true reward without obstruction in which most advanced bodhisattvas live ; the
land of the eternally peaceful light accessible to the dharmakayas.
Below some other pure land names in Buddhism.
The land of perfect bliss (Sukhavati) of Buddha Amitabha, the best known, described in the
sutras of the pure land, it would be located to the west of our world.The land of joy (Abhirati)
of the Akshobhya Buddha located to the east of our world.The emerald land of the
Bhaisajyaguru Buddha; described in the Sutra of Bhaisajyaguru, it would be located to the
east of our world.Then why not the pure land (Celtic hereafter) of the Hornunnos Buddha?
Primordial druidism, that before the Bronze Age elsewhere in Central Europe, therefore
formed a first attempt to meet the anxieties of Mankind facing natural phenomena: thunder
and lightning, hail, storms, floods, drought, etc.Ignorance of the causes producing a certain
number of these natural phenomena: light, night, wind, clouds, motions of stars, growth of
plants and of animals, eclipses, diseases ( particularly epilepsy), etc.was added to fear.The
high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) brought to the men of the megalithic era a new
spirituality, a new design or vision of the world, what does not mean they made a clean
sweep of the beliefs and of the rites of the past. But this Indo-European contribution made
more masculine European religion: the worship of the Mother Goddess-or-demoness was
pushed into the background, behind that of the male god-or-demons. The solar symbols
(small sun wheel, triskelion...) ousted the lunar symbols.The ancient terror in front of the
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unknown of the other world parallel to ours, called Hereafter; in front of the death goddess-or-
demoness, the evil spirits and the soul/minds of the late; made room for the optimistic views
of a second life in the bliss of Eternal Youth islands (Tir na nOg. Cf. the buddhakshetra of the
other end of the Aryan world). The very ways of thinking changed. Art and philosophy were no
longer dominated by dualistic designs (two is the female figure par excellence), but by the
ideal of the triad. The triskelion (a decorative pattern composed of three elements turning
around the same central point and representing water, earth and fire)…Deprived of the
scientific explanations of our time the first druids, the primordial druids, began thinking that
there were invisible powers in the very middle of the visible world, powers, of course, superior
to man. And they made them personal God-or-demons, i.e., they ascribed them some of the
characteristics of a human being, more or less marked according to the phenomena.The later
druidism, that of classical Antiquity, as for it, came quickly to emphasize the positive effects
of Nature. Large and small rivers which bring fertility, quenching springs, clouds which
dispense the rain, guarantee of a good harvest, the mildness of the sun after winter, etc.Some
of these immanent powers of nature became more transcendent deities who were evoked by
a certain number of symbols or representations, and of whom it was quickly necessary to
explain the place in our universe.Also let us note that, to this first type of religiosity of
ecological or naturalist type, another one was added, and this, almost as soon as the
beginning: the belief in the survival of something of the individual after death.
PRINCIPLES OF THE TRUE DRUIDISM OF EARLY TIMES.
We call true druidism that which really existed, in the flesh; there are 2.000 or 2.500 years
elsewhere in Central Europe. Not the untrue fantasies widespread since under this name, by
scores of ignoramuses and charlatans, of the kind: true druidism comes from Atlantis, Jesus
was a druidic initiate, the megalithic monuments like Stonehenge and Carnac mark out nodes
of telluric energy, etc.
Our merry old Earth (Litavis) is, of course, a living being (magnetic fields, underground water
veins, tectonic plates, volcanism, etc.); a living being we are assassinating, besides. But
nobody has seriously pointed out until now the famous telluric streams in question.Welsh
accounts are too much Christianized to be really useful to our search for the Grail in this
field.This is true not only for the famous triads, but also for the Mabinogion. It should not be
forgotten indeed that the Welsh were Christianized several centuries before the Gaels, and
these few centuries of evolution make the whole difference. Let us add that the Irishmen, in
spite of some sporadic landing (perhaps on the call of certain natives: for example in
Drumanagh, 20 km north of Dublin) were never Romanized, unlike the Welsh; and it will be
understood why it is better, when we want to really have a little idea of what genuine druidic
spirituality was, to study Irish tales and legends. But the task here is much too difficult,
because from the fifth century (according to John Toland) St Patrick and his successors
made everything was contrary to the letter as to the spirit of the Gospel , disappear from the
laws and from the habits. There remain nothing but traces or fortuitous snippets of everything
that would have so highly interested us, preserved or distorted at random in transcriptions,
because the scribes understand them no longer.
What was there in the head of a Celt in the Central and Western Europe at the time of
Hallstatt, before the arrival of Romans?In the head of a Celt, let us say rather of an average
inhabitant of the Central and Western Europe at the time of Hallstatt, before the arrival of the
Romans, the life was so designed.
1)There exists another world, which pervades and surrounds this world, another world which
contains or includes all that is unknown, incomprehensible and mystical.
2).This other world is the residence of superhuman beings of whom we do not see, at best,
that the face or the visible materialization: the land we plow and the country in which we live,
the ancestors of the people and of the clan. Sun, water, trees, animals.In this world and
through this world, these forces and these powers act.
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3) These beings are able to appear in varied shapes, some strange, even monstrous,shapes.
But they are also likely to take the shapes of familiar animals or a human appearance.
Women, mothers, queens or old women. They bring on Earth disaster or salvation; direct
wars and determine happiness. These beings of the Other World have a particular liking for
human beings, and some are even ancestors.Certain men know some of the rules of this
other universe, and tell stories, which make it possible to understand a little what happens in
this other world and consequently in ours.
4).Certain humans can read and understand some of the signs of this Other World. They
know some rules about the behavior it is necessary to adopt in front of these phenomena.
They accompany therefore the life of the men and of the women with their interpretation:
lucky or unlucky days, etc.
5) The inhabitants of the Other World give priority to certain places and certain moments in
order to enter our universe. One of the moments in the year favored by them in this intention,
it is the beginning of the dark season
6).When a human being enters this Other World without being dead before, he can return
from it.But there exists another way leading to this Other World: death.
7) Principle of life is in the head.
A. If head is separated from the body before death, it can be expected that this head remains
alive. But that, it is a very rare event and regarded as remarkable or worthy to be noted.
B. It is possible to prevent the return of the dead if you separate this head from the rest of his
body, and if it is done so both are no longer in touch.
C. If Death leads to the Other World; it is from there that Life comes back to us. All
phenomena combined with growth and abundance, but also with the water of the rivers and of
the lakes, with the landscape and the earth, which offers food, as well as with the sun; all this
comes to us from the beings of the Other world (see 2).
8) It is said that certain humans are able to change themselves into various animals or into
other human beings, temporarily
8 a). Such a power is not very common and it is difficult besides to determine if those who
have this power are normal human beings, or creatures of the other world having taken a
human shape.
EDITOR’S NOTE: WHAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO LEARN FROM THAT AS LESSONS FOR
TODAY DRUIDISM?
Life is over determined by the rhythm of the seasons and the repetitions which result from
them in nature, in forests, fields, waters, gardens, or in the activities of men and women .Day
and night, dark season and clear season, growth, harvest and fallow, the cycle of the stars
and of the days, the cardinal points.
1) Existence of invisible forces and of another world.
2) The laws of this other world determine our world.
3) The mythology.
4) The role of the wise men.
5) The contact with the other world.
6) Death is a passing into this other world.
7) Metamorphoses.
7bis) Prudence with regard to metapyschism (today we say parapsychology).
8) Importance of nature and natural rhythms. Life is overdetermined etc....
THE CELTIC RELIGION ACCORDING TO J. - L. BRUNAUX.
Another true religious revolution occurred, at least in the northern half, in the years 300
before our era. The majority of the peoples, after long treks, have then found the territory they
preserved until the arrival of Caesar. So the warriors leave to priests the control of religious
affairs, but still of education, justice and of a part of political matters. It is, of course, the time
of the peak of druids, these priest philosophers who are sometimes compared to Brahmans in
India, but who, however, represented only a part - of course the top of the sacerdotal
hierarchy. The evoked complex rituals suppose that many specialized or subordinate
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officiating priests were with them, sacrificers and soothsayers, in other words, the vates that
Strabo points out. Caesar made obviously a mixture of these various bodies to keep only the
druids whose image he gives turns out to be surprisingly antiquated. The only one historically
known was, however, a contemporary and a friend of Caesar: the Aeduan Divitiacus, of whom
we know that he was a war leader, and one of the main political characters in his city. Thanks
to Cicero, who received him in his house in Rome, we know that he was a high-knower of the
druidiaction (druidecht), specialized in divination. The entire contrary, in a way, of these
hermits in white toga that Pliny describes in his famous passage on the gathering of mistletoe.
The work of Dumezil could establish that their societies, at least theoretically, were divided
into three (or four we have added) quite distinct social classes. A priestly first class which was
in charge of the religious and the sacredness. A military second class for war. A craft third
class which was to produce everything the society needs (carpenters, smiths, etc.). A servile
fourth class formed by the overcome people (Atectai/Aithech Tuatha, cf. Shudras in Hindu
civilization).
CELTIC RELIGION BY GEORGE DOTTIN.
Below what the French historian George Dottin could bring as specifications in connection
with Celtic people. This author having published his work before those of Dumezil (about
1904) he was therefore never influenced by the three functions theory of the latter, in that he
remains therefore fundamental for us. He develops in this text a non-dumezilian, though very
scholar, view,of Celtic people.
Celtic people were always anxious to know their destiny. They look most skillful of the
peoples in ominous science, and the Galatian Dejotarus [in current Turkey] was regarded as
a remarkable augur. The divination was done by means of expression of various birds, crow,
and eagle; among the [Great] British, by the race of a quadruped: the hare. Birds indicate to
armies the direction they were to follow; informed by the flight of an eagle Dejotarus
backtracks.
Editor’s note: we will reconsider this question later : the possibility or not for minds
exceptionally gifted with a very unusal clarity, to anticipate what will happen; broad outlines by
rational analysis, details through always possible premonitory dreams, or both by exceptional
intervention of God or Allah (see the case of prophets in the Old Testament).
It remains still at the oldest time, memories of worship for certain animals. Among the Great
[British], goose, hen and hare are taboo. We have quoted higher the nickname of Mercurius:
Moccus, which means “pig“. It is known that the razorback, the wild pig, was the warlike
ensign of Celtic people, and that it appears as such on the triumphal arch in Orange [France].
Nennius tells us about a marvelous animal, the porcus troitus chased by the dux bellorum
Arthur in a rather fantastic hunting; it is the twrch trwyth of the Welsh story entitled Kulhwch
and Olwen, and this famous pig or wild boar is perhaps, in the Celtic legend, a memory of the
time when the wild boar was the symbol or the totem of certain tribes. The small altar of the
three-headed god found in Rheims [in France therefore] is topped by a ram's head. We
already spoke about the bull and the three cranes, about the ram-headed snake as well as
about God-or-demons with horns of a ram or antlers of a stag, which remind no longer but
through one detail of the initial worship of the sacred animals....Celtic people believe in the
indications given by the dreams.....
We know through Pliny that the sessile oak is the tree of sacred woods among Celts and that
no ceremony is performed without its foliage. Maximus of Tyre informs us that an oak is the
Celtic representation (agalma) of Zeus. We find in a passage of Pliny that the lycopodium
selago protected against accidents. And that mistletoe, they called with a name which means
“panacea“ in Celtic language, was a medicine against poisons; that it gave fertility to any
sterile animal. The mistletoe growing on a sessile oak is extremely rare; so it was looked at as
sent by heaven. The gathering of this mistletoe, Pliny tells us, is done on the sixth day of the
moon. After having prepared according to the rites, under the tree, some sacrifices and a
meal, they make two white bulls whose horns are bound then for the first time, approach. A
priest, get dressed in white, climb up the tree and cut the mistletoe with a gold billhook [in fact
a voulge or a wood hoe]; it is received on a white sagum; then they immolate the victims while
praying that the god [or demon of course] makes the gift he made, favorable to those to whom
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he grants it.The sacred woods of which, at the time of Pliny, the sessile oak was the main
element, are mentioned by the authors of Antiquity. The Galatians in Asia Minor had a senate
which met to judge the assassinations in a place called Drunemeton; and the second term of
this word means sacred wood. Did these sacred woods serve as a shrine for the Transalpine
ones? We would be tempted to believe it, because Caesar speaks only about the devoted
place where, in loco consecrato, on the territory of Carnutes, the high knowers of the
druidiaction (druidecht) met each year at a fixed time to do justice.Among the Cisalpine ones,
it is not doubtful that there were temples. Livy reports to us that in 216 before our era, the
spoils and the head of the consul Postumius were carried by the Boians in the most respected
temple of their nation. There was also among the Insubres a temple of Athena.Were the
temples decorated, as among the Romans, with worshipped statues of God-or-demons?
About this point, the witnesses of Ancients are contradictory. Galatians, according to Strabo,
had in the town called Tavium a colossal statue of Jupiter. In addition, Diodorus reports to us
that Brennus made much fun of the idea the Greeks had, to make wood or stone god-or-
demons. The words used to designate some representations of deities are often very vague.
Polybius speaks about “the golden ensigns, which are called the irremovable ones” (Book II,
chapter XXXII: anathemata).Lucan describes us in a sacred wood, some coarsely carved tree
trunks representing God-or-demons: simulacra maesta deorum. Lastly, Caesar states to us
that there are rather numerous representations of Mercury: cujus sunt plura simulacra. And
yet, like Solomon Reinach pointed it out, it is hardly probable that simulacra means statues;
the word simulacra in fact has the vague sense of images, of symbolic indication. If there had
been statues of God-or-demons before the Roman conquest, it would be inadmissible that
nobody discovered some of them in Bibracte or in Alesia, however, we did not find illustrated
representations pertaining to the period which goes from the reindeer age to the Roman time.
Editor’s note. There are some; however, which were discovered since the writing of this article
by George Dottin (1900), from the wooden statue of Bobigny (fourth century before our era,
still a simulacrum?) to the bronze mask of Montsiere through the gods of Bouray or Saint-
Maur, out of bronze sheets (a statuette of warrior god discovered in 1984 in the north of
France and dating back to the first century before our era).In the temples and the sacred
enclosures, en tois ierois kai temenesin, Celtic people pile up a large quantity of gold they
offer to the god-or-demons, and though all the Celts like money, none of them dares to touch
it. Arvernes had hanged in a temple, pros iero, the sword that Caesar had left in their hands.
And the conqueror who saw it later in this place, refused to take it again, by saying that it was
necessary to respect an object devoted to gods. The spoils of enemies were mainly to form
the temple hoards.The worship comprised prayers, dances, libations and sacrifices.British
Queen Boudicca invokes Adrasta while raising one hand to heaven. The high knowers of the
druidiaction, in the island of Mona, pray while raising arms to heaven. To adore, Celtic people
turned from eft to right. Among Irishmen in the Middle Ages, ditto. It is with dances that during
the night, with a full moon, according to Strabo, the Celts of the Iberian Peninsula celebrated
the worship of a higher god without a proper noun.Boii of Cisalpine used the skull of consul
Postumius, decorated with a gold circle, as a sacred vessel to offer libations in the
festivals.The sacrifices were often human sacrifices. They believe, Caesar tells us that the life
of a man is necessary to buy back the life of another man, and that man cannot calm the
immortal god-or-demons differently. They believe that the execution of those who are
convicted of theft, armed robbery, or some other crime, is that the immortal god-or-demons
liked most; but when these kinds of victims are not rather numerous, they compensate for by
sacrificing innocent persons. In the first half of the third century before our era, Sopatros of
Paphos, quoted by Athenaeus, accuses Galatians of killing the prisoners of war. Justin
informs that the Gallo-Graeci make sacrifices before fighting battles, and that if omens are
fateful, they cut the throat of their wives and of their children, in order not to let them fall alive
into the hands of their enemies. Nevertheless in Gaul, around 40 before our era, the high
knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) attracted to their altars men bound by solemn vows
and made a little of their blood flowing out, but without putting them to death.Among the
religious beliefs, one of those which astonished the most the Ancients, is the belief in the
immortality of the soul [or of the spirit]. “Tradition has it that the Celts will lend you money, but
you will have to pay back the loan in the other world. They do this because they are
convinced that human souls are immortal. I would call them fools (Valerius Maximus notes), if
these men in their breeches did not have the same belief as Pythagoras in his Greek cloak.”
For other writers, these doctrines had come to them through the high knowers of the
druidiaction (druidecht). The fact remains that it was very widespread and popular. Hence the
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use among Celts to lend themselves refundable sums in the other world, to also admit “hell”
as a place of payment of their trade businesses, to burn or bury with the dead what is used for
the living. One even saw, Pomponius Mela said, some parents to throw themselves
voluntarily on the pyre of their close relations, in the hope of going to live with them. Celts
claim to fear neither the earthquakes nor the floods: they move completely armed ahead of
the floods. The fact is that the faith in another life is eminently likely to intensify courage; it
was undoubtedly also the cause of these suicides with religious nature, pointed out among
Celts; it can in the same way, in certain cases, to give an account of the human sacrifices,
about which we come to speak.It does not seem, although the texts are obscure and
contradictory, that this immortality of soul/minds consisted of a second life on the Earth in a
new body. It is not the Pythagorean doctrine, according to which the soul/mind of the villains
returned in this world to live in another body, while the soul/minds of righteous persons
experimented in the airspace a purely spiritual life. They are neither the quiet residences of
Erebus, nor the depths of the pale kingdom of Dis that the soul/minds in question reach. The
same breath livens up their limbs in another world; death forms the middle of a long life. The
situation of this other world varies according to the geographical localization of the various
Celtic people. As A. Le Braz pointed it out, peoples of the continent readily placed it in the
islands. A tradition fixed in writing in the sixth century by Procopius, reports that the
inhabitants of the country located opposite Great Britain, were responsible for leading the
soul/minds of dead, from the continent into the island. In the middle of the night, the latter
hear knocking at the door, and a voice calls them low. They go then to the shore, without
knowing what force involves them. They find there boats which seem empty, but which are so
loaded with the soul/minds of dead, that the gun whale and the oarlocks are hardly above the
billows.In less than one hour, they arrived at the end of their voyage, whereas usually it takes
all day long for them to go there. On the island of British, they see nobody, but they hear a
voice which counts their passengers by calling them each one by their name.It is only
according to the epic literature in Ireland that we can have an idea of the Elysium dreamed by
Celtic people, a marvelous country which is reached by embarking on a boat of glass. Beyond
the sea, they saw a large transparent tower with blurred outlines; in the openings of the
crenellations some shapes appeared which resembled men. Whoever tried to land at the foot
of the tower was taken away by the sea billows. Beyond the tower plains planted with strange
trees stretched. Some had silver branches, to which gold apples hanged. When you knock
these apples the ones on the others, they produced such a harmonious sound that you could
not hear it without forgetting all your troubles. At the foot of these trees streams of wine and
mead ran. The rain which refreshed the land was made of beer; the swine that fed in the plain
reappeared, once eaten, for new feasts. Here and there a pleasant music enchanted your
ears and delighted your soul/mind with its soft melodies. It was well the life of which every
Celt had been able to dream here below. Still young, still beautiful, crowned with flowers, he
spent his days in long feasts in which beer did not cease running, in which pork did not lack. It
was never heard disputes about knowing to whom the best piece was to go. Fights formed a
part of the pleasures of the people of dead persons; the warriors had bright weapons; they
shone with the whole glare of youth; the battles were more terrible and fiercer than in the
world of the living, and blood rivers ran in the Great Plain [but everybody was resurrected
after]. Thus the Celt found in the other life, all that he had liked on Earth, music, good food,
and war.
Editor’s note. Considering the multiplicity of descriptions of this Celtic hereafter, druids today
are quite forced to note that they undoubtedly were in them unceasingly renewed attempts to
describe more a situation or a state of being, characterized by the bliss, than a well-defined
place.The oldest mention of the noun druids is in Diogenes Laertius, in his Lives of eminent
philosophers. He writes that philosophy began among barbarians. That the first philosophers
were, among Persians the Magi, in Babylon and in Assyria the Chaldeans, in India the
gymnosophists, among the Celts and Galatians the druids or semnothes (Druidas e
semnotheous). And he quotes as authorities an apocryphal treaty of Aristotle, tò magikon,
and Sotion of Alexandria (second century before our era) in the twenty-third books of the work
entitled Diadoche ton philosophon.Strabo mentions that among all Celtic peoples almost
without exception, three classes of men are found who are the subjects of extraordinary
honors, i.e.: the bards (bardoi), the vates (ouateis) and the druids (druidai). Caesar speaks to
us only about druids (druidae).The nouns bard and druid are preserved in the Celtic
languages. Old Ireland had three orders of well-read men: bards(bard), druids (drui, druad),
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and fili (veledae). The latter, who are at the same time soothsayers, judges and poets, were
divided into different classes, according to the number of epic stories they could tell.As for the
other nouns given by the authors in Antiquity, none seems Celtic; semnotheous is a Greek
adjective that the author regarded, of course, as a simple explanation of the noun druidas.The
druids, for the authors of Antiquity, therefore form one of the classes of men who are honored
among Celts. They coincide neither with the bards, neither with the soothsayers, nor with the
vates.The bards are poets authors of panegyrics or satires; they sing on a lyre [a rote,
Venantius Fortunatus, book VII, song 8, opposes it as well to the lyre of Romans as to the
harp of barbarians] the exploits of heroes.Soothsayers predict by the flight of the birds or the
examination of the entrails of victims [we will reconsider the subject in another book ]. Vates
deal with sacrifices and natural laws.The high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht),
independently of physics and physiology, profess moral philosophy (some deontological
codes) and are regarded as the most just of the men.In the authors who speak only about the
druids, they are confused with the soothsayers and the vates. The word druid has therefore,
in the writers of Antiquity, two meanings: a broad sense and a restricted sense.In the
broadest sense, they include under the name of druids about all liberal professions, and,
Caesar tells us, “there are only two classes of men who have importance and are honored;
one is that of the druids, the other that of the knights“. While the knights form elite of the army,
the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) are free from any military service. They take
part in the exertion of public authority as well as the knights. Divitiacus who, according to what
Cicero says to us, was a druid, has a life rather not very different from that of his brother
Dumnorix, who himself was not a druid, and who is very involved in the political matters of his
time.Caesar speaks in a passage about the sacerdotes, who can be different from the druids,
and nothing indicates to us that the priests of the Boians, sacerdotes, antistes, that Livy
mentions, were some druids.To designate, at the Roman time, the priests appointed to the
local worships, there was a word which is undoubtedly Celtic, gutuater. The inscriptions
inform us that there was in Macon a gutuater of Mars, and in Autun some gutuater of the god-
or-demon Anvalos. The confusion of the gutuater and of the druid is made only in Ausonius,
who besides uses in another passage, in order to designate a priest of Belenus, the
expression Beleni aedituus.The religious functions of the high-knower of the druidiaction
(druidecht) consisted especially of being at the ceremonies and dealing with the public and
private sacrifices.The divination formed a part of the sciences they practiced. Divitiacus
predicted the future as well as through the observation of birds as through conjecture.
According to Caesar, the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) interpret the will of the
god-or-demons: religiones interpretantur. At the time of Tacitus, druids announced that the
burning of the Capitol presaged the nearest fall of the Roman empire. The high knowers of
the druidiaction (druidecht) in Ireland seem to us especially magicians and prophets. They
predict, they interpret the secret wills of the gods or of the fairies, they cast spells. Using
magic formulas and incantations, they can find the place where a person hides; to overpower
an enemy with all kinds of harms, to make a thick fog appear between two armies, to make
snow fall, to change the day into a night, to make a sterile woman pregnant. They know the
beverages which make the men forget. They have the power to impose obligations, geis or
gessa, from which it is impossible to move away, but also to make certain objects taboo.
These gessa are very various. Naoise was forbidden to come into Ireland, in times of peace,
except with three men: Cuchulainn, Conall and Fergus. Fergus had received for law never to
refuse an invitation and not to leave a feast before it was finished. Cuchulainn was forced to
never pass close to a hearth without making a halt there and accepting food from it but he
was forbidden to eat dog. The predictions of the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht)
have as an aim sometimes the birth, glory, or future misfortunes of a child; the fatal effect of a
weapon, the revenge with which an overcome person threats his victor.
Editor’s note. The possibility of predicting the future, rises, of course, as we have already had
the opportunity to say, a whole series of problems. For the events of astronomical nature like
solstices or eclipses, it was to be a question of mathematical knowledge. For weather
forecasting, they were to be the combination of observations and statistics; there is a clue of
that with the famous trigrams in the calendar of Coligny. For other predictions, they were to be
calculations of probabilities as we have an indication of them in the De Divinatione by Cicero.
Or then, of course, some simple forecasts, very rational but being the subject of a staging
resulting from the purest supernaturality, kind study of the entrails of animals, flight of birds
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(one would say astrology numerology, etc. today…) intended to give them still more
psychological weight. On the possibility therefore of predicting, or not, the future, see our
following lessons. Animals indeed can detect the warning signs of certain natural disasters, a
harsher than usual winter, an approaching storm, impending earthquakes ... ..
Sacrifices are rarely mentioned in Ireland; it seems all the mentions of atebertas or offerings
to God-or-demons were removed from Irish texts. But we find in glosses the Gaelic word
which means victim and sacrifice. And in a Latin Life of St Patrick it is written that at the time
of the Fes Temrach or “Feast of Tara“; not only the princes of all the kingdom, the great ones,
and the provincial chiefs, but also the masters of the druids, druidum magistri; met for
immolating victims to idols. During the funeral of a chief, his animals were slaughtered; it is
the same use as in the time of Caesar.But what relations, the wonders in popular tales we
have just reported, can have with the former Celtic religion? The Irish high knowers of the
druidiaction (druidecht), sometimes act in a fairy world in which the imagination of storytellers
creates the most incredible wonders; sometimes in a little civilized society where the sorcery
practices seem to serve as religious belief. Fetishism hardly occupies a place in them,
perhaps because the Christian writers of Irish epics made everything that could remind of
idolatry, disappear from them. The religion of the Gallo-Romans has perhaps some common
features with this whole of superstitions the Irishmen of the first centuries of our era had
preserved. But it is not very probable that the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) at
the time of Caesar, had been, as their fellow members in Ireland, only some wizards or
illusion makers. The druid Divitiacus, however, hardly differed, it seems, as for the intellectual
culture, from the Roman well-read men of his time.The Ancients had been stricken by the
analogy that the doctrines of these druids about the immortality of soul/mind showed with the
teaching of Pythagoras. None of them, however, says expressly that the druids had some
relationship with Pythagoras or his disciples. Diodorus of Sicily uses the expression “the
belief of Pythagoras prevails among them“; Valerius Maximus makes only a parallel between
the two doctrines. The text of Ammianus Marcellinus who undoubtedly has Timagenes as a
source is less clear. Among them the druids, men of loftier genius, bound in brotherhoods
according to the precepts and example of Pythagoras; their minds were elevated by
investigations into secret and sublime matters, and from the contempt which they slightly
entertained for human affairs they pronounced the soul/mind [Latin animas] immortal.The
sentence ut auctoritas Pythagorae decrevit, according to the ordinary use of Latin language,
must mean simply that the druidic sodalicia consortia, had an organization similar to that
Pythagoras had set up; it is not very probable that it determines the whole of the
sentence.Druidic teaching, which was in great favor as long as the country remained
independent, did not survive the conquest a long time. A senatus-consultum, under the reign
of Tiberius, removed the druids: sustulit druidas.Officially removed, the high knowers of the
druidiaction (druidecht) continued during some time to teach in the forests. The opening of the
Roman schools of Autun, Lyon, and Bordeaux, in France, removed from them the noble
young people as customers.
Among Irishmen, the high knowers are surrounded by many disciples. Catubatuos (Cathbad)
had with him a hundred men who, under his direction, learned druidism (druidecht). In one of
the hagiographic legends attached to the life of St Patrick, two druids are in charge of the
education of the daughters of King Loegaire. In what consisted the druidic teaching? A gloss
of the Senchus Mor, collection of Irish jurisprudence, informs us that Irish druids affirmed that
it was themselves who had made sky, earth, sea, sun, moon, etc. [counter-lay by Peter
DeLaCrau: who explained how the sky, the earth, and so on, had been made]. And it is
possible it is there the last word of this druidic cosmogony of which, without knowing it, some
people liked to praise the scientific profundity.The high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht)
have the reputation to be the most just of the men.So they were made judges of public and
private disputes. If a crime was committed, if a murder took place, if there is a dispute about
an inheritance or some limits, they are themselves who decide, and who work out fines and
punishments. If a private individual or a public man does not want to stick to their sentence,
they forbade them to sacrifice. It is there the most serious punishment, those who have been
informed of this prohibition, are put among the impious persons and among the criminals;
everyone moves away from them, avoids their approach and their conversation, in order not
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to receive some damage from their contact; if they lodge a complaint, justice is not done for
them and they have no longer official function. At a certain time of the year, the high knowers
meet on the territory of Carnutes, in a devoted place. There, from everywhere, those who
have disagreements come, and they obey their judgments as well as their decrees.The
political role of the high knowers is little known to us. It is only in Dio Chrysostom that we find
the assertion that the kings can decide nothing without druids. And that it would be right to
say that it is themselves who command, that these kings sitting on gold thrones, living in
splendid residences, are only their ministers or the servants of their will. Caesar speaks us
about the accession to power of Convictolitavis, appointed according to the use of the city, by
the priests, per sacerdotes more civitatis. Is this an election by the druids which is questioned
in this passage? Is not to their moral power rather to their political power that the high
knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) owe to have a great authority in the affairs of peace;
as well as in those of war, and to be able to pacify two armies on the point of coming to blows,
while throwing themselves in the middle of the fighters? Nothing comes to confirm, for the
former times, the assertion of Dio Chrysostom. If the high knowers had a political influence, it
was perhaps due to their personal status, and did not form a privilege of their functions.
Divitiacus, in the many incidents of his political career, uses so little his status of druid that it
seems Caesar was unaware of it.The best comment of the text of Dio Chrysostom is in an
Irish epic entitled “the driving off the cattle of Cualnge.” Cuchulainn, Ulster hero, after having
tried to push back personally the invasion of the men from Connaught, is seriously wounded;
he is then forced to send somebody to warn King Cunocavaros/Conchobar and the army of
the Ulaid of the danger which threatens them. The messenger arrives within sight of the
fortress and exclaims: “Men are slain, women abducted, cattle driven away, O noble
Ulstermen!” But he doesn’t get an answer. He goes beneath the walls of the fortress and
renews his call: “Men are slain, women abducted, cattle driven away, O noble Ulstermen!”
And still nobody for answering him. Then, he moves forward once again; he stops on the
stone of hostages in the fortress and repeats: “Men are killed, women abducted, cattle driven
away!” And it is then only that the druid Catubatuos (Cathbad) opens his mouth: “Who kills the
men, abducts the women, and drives away the cows?
Because, the storyteller explains, such was the rule in Ulster: it was taboo for the Ulaid to
speak before their king, and it was taboo for the king to speak before his druid.Among
Irishmen, there are no druidesses, but only ban-fili who, like the fili, are at the same time
soothsayers and poetesses.An important matter, and whose study forms the principal
originality of the book by Alexander BERTRAND on the religion, is the internal organization of
the druidic body. Caesar says us only that the high knowers have a chief who has over them
the supreme authority. This chief, when he has died, is replaced by worthiest, and if several
candidates have equal titles, the successor is elected by the vote of druids. Sometimes they
dispute even through fighting this supreme dignity. The text of Ammianus Marcellinus quoted
above, speaks incidentally about the corporative associations of druids established under the
inspiration of the Pythagorean ideas.In Ireland the high knowers act separately or by groups
of two even of three. They are married most of the time and live in family, each one in their
house. In the Life of St Patrick, we read that one day ten white-dressed druids rose against
him; nothing indicates that these druids formed an association.
A. Bertrand, comparing the text of Ammianus Marcellinus to the current organization of the
lamaseries in Tibet; supposed that the affiliated ones of the highest rank, the high knowers of
the druidiaction (druidecht), were compelled to live in communities, surrounded by their
disciples and some subordinate members of the sodality. Such an organization means
obviously the establishment of great centers of joint dwellings. Like the lamaseries in Tibet,
these kinds of religious oases would have been conservatories of old medical and craft
traditions and of civil laws. There would have been in these communities mixing of doctrines
endowed with a very high religious and moral feeling, source of a very strict cenobitic, with
crass superstitions, barbarian practices, an appalling charlatanism; of which the chiefs of
these lamaseries are perfectly aware while feeling unable to destroy them because of the
circumstances.
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Finally, such communities would have represented on a small scale a whole society: priests,
professors, architects, artists, musicians, doctors, and missionaries. The great monasteries in
Ireland, Scotland and England, which seems to rise from the ground spontaneously at a time
when France does not have any yet, would be only druidic communities changed by
Christianity. A. Bertrand notices that in these monasteries, it is not the religion, they are the
sciences, the literature, in short what the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) taught
formerly, which are especially flourishing. Their monks in them not only know Latin, but also
Greek; in them it is calligraphed with an art which was never really surpassed.
Editor’s note. The relations between Ireland and the European continent are not exactly new.
And it is perhaps not a coincidence if the Corcu Loegde in the west of our modern county
Cork, who claimed later to have been the first Christians in Ireland, were importers of
Bordeaux wine for a long time. It is besides interesting to note that the name Bordgal is found
in the toponymy of the counties of Westmeath and Kilkenny, and that it is also a Gaelic word
meaning "meeting place.”Kuno Meyer, in his article entitled “Learning in Ireland in the fifth
century” published in 1913, taking up an assumption of Professor Zimmer, ascribes the
intellectual development of Ireland from the fifth century to the arrival of continental
scholars fleeing the invasions of Goths or Huns. Besides he bases himself for that on a
passage of Virgil the grammarian, preserved in the glossary of Leiden and pointing out that
“because of their devastation all the intellectuals on this side of the sea have fled, and in
these countries of overseas, i.e., in Hiberia and everywhere where they settled, the
educational level of the populations increased considerably. Zimmer and Meyer indeed
propose to read Hibernia instead of Hiberia.
These literati (well-read men) from the Continent undoubtedly formed for a long time quite a
distinct community in Ireland. Besides the Confession of St Patrick mentions rhetoricians who
perhaps form part of them. James F. Kenney thinks besides that the Hisperica Famina or
Western sayings were undoubtedly worked out by Irish descendants of these men of letters
mentioned in the Glossary of Leiden.The entire question is therefore to know what the share
of non-Christian elements and even more precisely of druidic origin was, in the teaching
handed out in Ireland by these intellectuals come from the Continent in order to flee the great
barbarian migrations.
The ingenious assumption of Alexander BERTRAND deserves to be studied closely. In such
a subject, we cannot arrive at the certainty. It is enough that an assumption joins together a
certain number of probabilities so that it must be kept.A first question arises. Does the text of
Ammianus Marcellinus have well the meaning that A. Bertrand gives to it? The sense of
sodalicius is not doubtful. It means “relating to the corporation”; sodalicia are generally
religious corporations, but the word also designates corporations of craftsmen; however, it
does not mean communities. As for consortium it is difficult to determine if this word is taken
in the strictest sense or in the broadest sense, because it is not used in another passage of
Ammianus Marcellinus. Even if we had other examples of it in the same author, we could not
claim that it was always used there in the same meaning. In the strictest sense, consortium is
said of a community of possessions; it is used thus by Ulpian in his Digest XVII, 2, 52, and by
Suetonius, Claudius 28. But in the broadest sense it means community simply in the figurative
sense, taking part in, consortium Republicae in Livy, consortium regni in Tacitus, Annals IV,
3; consortium studiorum in Petronius, Satyricon, 101. If it is necessary to understand in the
sentence of Ammianus Marcellinus the word consortium in the strictest sense, we will be able
to give to the expression consortiis sodaliciis the meaning of cenobitic associations. If
consortium is taken in the broadest meaning, consortiis sodaliciis does not mean other things
only corporative associations, colleges, more or less similar to the priestly colleges of
Romans.But how to reconcile the assumption of the high knowers of the druidecht living
therefore in a community with what we know of the life of the druid Divitiacus, who is married,
has children, takes part in public affairs, and even in warlike expeditions?
Editor’s note. In short the entire same problem as with the Culdee monks of the British Isles in
the Middle Ages.
Romantic and mythical compositions of the Irish Early Middle Ages rewritten by Christian
writers; stage national heroes, magicians or wizards, in whom we have somewhat difficulty to
identify personifications of the natural forces or psychological motivations that former Celts
worshipped.This strange corporation of spiritualistic philosophers, physicists and naturalists,
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which are called druids, played a key role. Without having something which resembles official
functions, they occupy a great place in the State. The teaching of youth belongs to them.
They are taken for arbitrators in the majority of the public or private disputes. You cannot do
something without their presence when you offer a sacrifice to God-or-demons, because they
are the natural interpreters of the religious practices; they can predict; they know the
marvelous virtues of plants. In addition, they are recruited by a kind of co-optation. They are
united by close bonds, since they have the same chief elected by them.Is the druidism in
Antiquity an isolated institution of which analog does not exist? There seems well that among
Getae was something similar. Jornades, quoting the Getica ascribed to Cassius Dio, says to
us that Philippus of Macedon having invaded Moesia, some priests, of those Getae name Pii,
wearing white dresses, a harp in their hand, went to meet the enemy; while singing with a
begging voice some anthems in honor of the protective deities of their nation. And the
Macedonians, disturbed by the appearance of these unarmed men, made peace, then came
back home. This intervention of Getic priests reminds of the text by Diodorus which shows us
bards or druids pacifying two face-to-face armies, and throwing themselves in the middle of
the drawn swords or of the ready to be used lances.Strabo informs us that a former slave of
Pythagoras, a Get named Zamolxis, come back among his compatriots, called the attention of
their chiefs by the predictions he could draw from the celestial phenomena; and ended up
persuading one king to associate him to his power. One of the successors of Zamolxis,
Deceneus, taught ethics, and logic to Getae; he taught them the names and the course of the
stars, the properties of herbs, and inspired them such admiration with his science , that he
commanded not only men of modest rank, but kings themselves. Indeed, choosing in the
royal families some men with a noble soul and a wise mind, he persuaded them to devote
themselves to the worship of certain deities but also to honor their shrines.The religious
corporation established among the Getae by Deceneus, the teaching he gave, the civilizing
mission that he fulfilled, are all these facts comparable to the druidic colleges, with their
philosophical doctrines, their social role? We cannot affirm it. Like druidism, the doctrine of
Zamolxis was linked by the Ancients to the influence of Pythagoras. Would there have been a
spreading of the Pythagorean doctrines among the most various peoples ; or would it be the
doctrine of Pythagoras only a particular aspect of a great movement of ideas which would
have entered he civilized world six centuries before the common era?Unfortunately, in the
cemetery of the past religions, inscriptions are rare, tombs empty, graves upset since a long
time and we know nothing, but that we walk on the dust of the dead (George Dottin).
LATER.....FOLK DRUIDISM.
Whether the doctrine of the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) was or not of foreign
origin, it seems it was distinct, of the extremely numerous religious practices to which the
people devoted itself, gens admodum dedita religionibus. However, these religious practices
had not been brought by the druids who restricted themselves to interpret them, to find
perhaps a symbolic sense to them.”The interpretative religions as druidism have had as a
major asset to be able to adapt to the developments of techniques and he customs. They
remain in touch with the concerns of individuals.It is generally fashionable to make fun of
popular piety. Such is not our case, even if we distance ourselves from it. This popular piety
was that of our ancestors, our forefathers, and our foremothers. It helped them to support the
hard ordeals of life, and that is worthy of respect, that even deserves to be studied, and
therefore understood, even called upon. Did your grandmother, the goose-herd woman or
cooker in the manor, light candles for the Blessed Virgin, saint Rita or saint Antony of Padua,
and then? She does not remain less your grandmother, the one who dealt with you in the
village during school vacations. At least she has a right to some memories imbued with
respect on your behalf!It is enough to look at the statuary or the low-relief characteristic of
easy classes after the Roman conquest, to realize that it is these backgrounds that Roman
mentality entered most quickly and most easily. A first globalization in a way!And that it is
among poor people on the contrary, in the common people, in spite of the low value of the
statuettes or of the objects in question (the price of a plate) that the purest druidic faith was
longest kept. In spite of the treason of the scholars and of the careerist elites, more anxious
to collaborate with the powerful ones of the time than to resist them. Everyone is not able to
be Mariccus or George Washington.Forced by the conquest of the divine Julius (Caesar) to
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fight against the Roman influence, the “countryside Celtica“ therefore will go from an official
religion, with druids, to a family religion. Without druids but with an altar inside the
houses.People will continue nevertheless to attend public worship places, which they entered
around - 25, to leave in them bratou decantem or votive offerings made out of bronze
sheets.About year 40, the population will put statuettes on its family altars; and thus a new
representation of the Panth-eon or of the druidic divine pleroma will be born which will be
fixed around + 100.In the middle of the Roman empire, in the first and second century of our
era, on the territory of the current villages of Yzeure, Toulon-sur-Allier, Thiel-sur-Acolin, Saint-
Pourçain-sur-Besbre, and of the town of Vichy… (French department of Allier), as well as in
Autun, some potters (Pistillus in Augustodunum) have made thousands of white clay
figurines.Dimensions of the statuettes range from 7, 5 cm to more than 45 cm, but the vast
majority ranges from 10 cm to 20 cm, what indicates altars of very modest dimensions.Thi s
very varied production was spread very far, from Scotland to Hungary, and matched
consequently a true expectation of the peoples at that time. This new Panth-eon or divine
pleroma remained therefore the reflection of the concerns of the not too Romanized Celts.
Hence the interest of its study.This new Panth-eon, a more or less evolved reflection of the
former one, is almost mainly female, with more than 80% goddesses or demonesses, or
fairies; contrary to that of the Romans, which is male in the same proportions. Even if we
admit the similarities, the divine Julius (Caesar) claims to find between the god-or-demons of
the ones and those of the others; it is necessary in this case, either to concede that the
general is only a very mediocre hagiographer, or that these statuettes (which appear one
century after the loss of independence) are the evidence of evolution.The truth as usual is
perhaps between both.Beside a Romanized with excess and opulent aristocracy, which
generally collaborates with the invader, a whole people, overburdened, survives therefore.
This country which is shown to us as calm and happy (the famous Pax Romana), like in the
case of any colonization, was neither calm (it rebelled several times: see the bagaudae and
its different emperors) nor happy. These tens of thousands of white terra-cotta figurines (the
metal of the poor) ranged from Scotland to Hungary, evidence it. By a phenomenon
overlooked by the whole of the historians, these so frightening and (it appears) so cruel
warriors, are going, at least in all the popular classes, to rely on mythical women; some very
young girls, often stripped ; some mother goddess-or-demonesses or nourishing goddess-or-
demonesses. The same phenomenon as that of the hidden Christians of Nagasaki in Japan,
before 1865, with their famous Maria Kannon 1).It is in the spirituality, the divine protection
got by intercessors whose only force is their weakness that this society will seek the means of
its very survival. There is no armed statuette, of the kind of that which was discovered in
Saint-Maur in 1983, the equivalent (or almost) of the Roman Minerva, has just a shield,
symbol of protection.On the other hand, 60% of the production (therefore of religiosity) is
focused on a naked very young girl who has power over water apparently (hence her name or
her interpretatio “romana” in Venus Anadyomene, later beyond the centuries in Blessed
Virgin).We are unaware if they were the numerous representations of the same divine person
like the Virgin Mary of the Catholics or if they were the stereotyped representations of a
supernatural being specific to each family, to each home, of the kind female guardian angels
or of the type fairy protecting the family.
We do not know her or their Celtic name (matra nessama, matra lubica???), but it should be
admitted, on the other hand, that the hand laid on an object is a sign of power. Her right hand
tightens the lock of hair wet by the rain, and we find again in this gesture the Greek Venus.
Her left hand, at the end of a too long arm, divine sign of power, is placed on a spring of
which she appears to order the flow. In the beginning, as she must be naked to act, her tunic
was put on her wrist. The tunic disappears quickly then the spring also becomes a decorative
pattern.The presence, besides rather weak, of Venus that the 19th century has called “decent
“or “indecent “is also noticed.In fact, one has power on the mother's milk and the water of the
springs (the milk of the earth), the other on fertility. Not to be able to bear children was always
a personal drama for women. How many candles were not lighted to triumph over this
curse?The popular religiosity had its levels; the most deeply pious women or men placed the
statues of their saints or of their idols (almost always some Venus) in aediculae.
Editor’s note on what such a mystical practice could produce today on a more synthetic pan-
Celtic level. A kind of small wardrobe made of carved oak wood, opening as a triptych,
decorated with figurations of Ogmius, of the three Bethen, of Epona, and with for example a
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“Jupiter on horseback with an anguipedic monster” statuette in the middle. Or the contrary. A
figuration of the “Jupiter and anguipedic monster” in the back and a statuette of Epona in the
middle. Far East equivalent: kamidanas or butsudans. What is said of kamidanas or of
butsudans could very well apply to this kind of druidic crèche.
But let us return to our sheep! From Scotland to Hungary, the white terra-cotta collections of
Pistillus show well the influence of the “Roman taste” on customers, however, very eager to
remain very Celtic minded. We note nevertheless, at the end of the production, a
simplification of their forms, showing the search for customers still more modest than the
previous ones.
It should be added that 20% of this Panth-eon or Celtic divine pleroma is devoted to
representations of which interpretatio gallica did not make some Venus. There still we are
unaware of their name in Celtic language. Some fairies of matres lubicae or nessamae type,
or some nursing goddess-or-demonesses (Latin proxumae)? On these problems and this
difficulty see higher.
They are loosely dressed and seem lacking in any maternal sensitivity. Sitting in an armchair
of wicker (of which the “aristocratic” nature escapes to us), they hold one or two children who,
still swaddled in their clothes, are less seven months old therefore. They must themselves
seize the feeder breast, very symbolically represented as a cave containing a spring,
moreover. It is, it seems, the illustration of the nourishing earth, impassive, inert, who carries
out partly protection, but grants her fruits only to those who make an effort to cultivate, to
hunt, to gather.This protection can be of divine essence and the fortifications placed on the
head of the goddess-or-demoness, or of the fairy if this word is preferred, make her the
defensive symbol of a group.Other virgins and child take part in this new “Celtic Olympus “.
Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you want, Brigindo Brigantia Brigit for example, in the shape
of a protective maiden, first of two girls; who themselves, protect a very young boy (holding an
apple or a pomegranate, two highly symbolic fruits), the other ensuring of her help two young
boys, not yet adolescent, each one pressing on his genitals the hand of the other. At least five
versions of this model are known. They differ through tiny details, but are faithful copies of a
former prototype of which they respect even the height of the bases. The meaning of this unit
escapes to us. Christianity had taken over the gesture, but without having integrated its
meaning (an illustration of prudishness for Christians?) Everything is always a question of
interpretation, as in the case of the Muslim rituals relating to the pilgrimage in Mecca.
Some terra-cotta representing goddess-or-demonesses or fairies of plenty (Rosemartha)
appear in this production with the same state of mind.Provided with the horn from where
flowers and fruits escape, they also convey the need for good harvests.It is normal that in the
imitation of the victors, the populations establish worship to the goddess-or-demoness, or
fairy if it is preferred, of plenty. But this one does not have the majesty of her Roman
counterpart; the claims are quite less!In the same way that the Celtic Mercury, this
Rosemartha is a teenager, because the country hopes no longer but in its youth. It lost more
than one million men in the war.Its population is estimated to 12 million individuals, let 6
million male sex, who are 4 million male adults and 2 million in age (15 years to 30 years old)
to procreate or make the country thrive. Following the (failed) immigration of Helvetii half have
disappeared, killed, enslaved, and mutilated for various reasons. The overcome Asterix in
Uxellodunum to whom the divine Julius made cut their hands in - 51 had, of course, almost
all, to die of gangrene, or of hunger, even quite simply of destitution.These Rosemartha are
indicative of such a climate: they are young and modest. We are far away from the pomp of
the Romanity of the well-off and from the self-satisfaction of the Latin authors (we would say
today of the profiteers of globalization)..
The number of Rosemartha is tiny compared with that of the Matra lubica or nessama: the
plenty, they believe in it no longer very much!The Minervae are of the same vein, but more
pathetic. The hope of plenty made way to fear, and the horn became a shield. To protect
oneself against whom?The historians, so wordy on warlike subject, didn’t look into the anxiety
of the common people and we do not know what these twin sisters protected.If our Great
Queen Epona is the only druidic goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, adopted by the Romans, it is,
of course, because the latter never had their own cavalry and used mercenaries generally
Celtic, for that. The rigantona Epona was a member of a family of “animal-women.“ The
osmosis with a bull, a razorback, a bear, has a very archaic meaning that the she guardian of
horses had perhaps synthesized: the human domination over the animal world.
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1) With regard to the persecution of Christians in the 17th century Japan, much more
systematic than those of the Roman Empire, it must be pointed out that the aforementioned
Christians did not have long to give in to the demon of religious intolerance. See the
destruction of Buddhist temples in the Nagasaki region (specifically in Hirado) in 1558 by
Antony Koteda and Gaspar Vilela.The practice of a kind of Catholic taqiyya, the orasho, in
the face of the e-fumi which was imposed on them, nevertheless made them able to survive
as a religious group.The use of the term taqiyya is relevant because it goes without saying
that the following diagnosis (that of the transmission with the most ethereal religious ideas of
a whole unconscious of intolerance of contempt or even of racist violence IT IS EXTREMELY
IMPORTANT TO PSYCHOANALYZE IN ORDER TO HEAL FROM IT) also applies to Islam.It
is undeniable indeed that with all religious ideologies are also transmitted from generation to
generation behaviors or conditioned reflexes sometimes unconscious and not explicit or even
explicitly condemned, but nevertheless still recognizable by their effects and which
characterize even more religion than its official message. Feeling of superiority inherited from
Judaism, intolerance, etc. It is stupid to deny it, and every doctor of souls worthy of the name
must, on the contrary, shed light on these side effects of the intergenerational transmission of
a religious ideology in order to definitively cure from it the religion in question.
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THE (CHOSEN BY THE GODS) LANGUAGE.
What was, it is, I say it again, that half of Europe, at least, between 400 and 150 before our
era, spoke Celtic. It is, then that the Celtic language is narrowly linked to the oldest form of
the linguistic unity of Europe. To know the Celtic language, it is therefore to get closer to the
knowledge of the European origins, to the solution of this problem which is most enthralling,
perhaps, in the history of Mankind. If that were possible here for me, I would show that this
idea, that this assumption, to which perhaps some linguists would object, finds its
confirmation , not only in linguistic facts, but in archeological facts of any kind; institutions,
religions, ways of fighting and of ruling. I discover at every moment, in the Celtic world before
our era, some vestiges which remind me of oldest Italy, and some vestiges which make me
think of the initial Indo-European. I do not say that the Celt is similar to the latter, far from it.
But among all the men in the past, he is still the one who differs less from the great forebear,
ancestor and founder of the sovereign souls in Mankind “(Camille Jullian).
The fact that the invention of the (Celtic) language was ascribed to the god-or-demon
Ogmius from time immemorial is proven by what reports to us Lucian of Samosata about the
fresco representing this god-or-demon; discovered by him near Marseilles. And the account of
Diodorus of Sicily is also enlightening about this subject.Diodorus of Sicily, Book V, chapter
XXXI. “The Celts are terrifying in aspect and their voices are deep and altogether harsh; when
they meet together, they converse with few words and in riddles, hinting darkly at things for
the most part and using one word when they mean another; and they like to talk in
superlatives, to the end that they may extol themselves and depreciate all other men [in
Greek hyperbole]. They are also boasters and threatening and are fond of pompous
language, and yet they have sharp wits and are not without cleverness at learning... It is a
custom of theirs that no one should perform a sacrifice without a "philosopher"; for thank
offerings should be rendered to the gods, they say, by the hands of men who are experienced
in the nature of the divine, and who speak, as it were, the language of the gods [they are
homophonon in Greek], it is also through the mediation of such men, they think, that blessings
likewise should be sought.” This topic of the Celtic language chosen (or more exactly beloved
by the gods as certain Greek texts about Hyperboreans make us think of it ) also remained a
long time in Armorican Brittany, at least until the 18th century.
The Celtic language, or Breton, is an original mother language… the piece of evidence of
this truth, it is that it was given by God and not invented or composed by men. It takes almost
all its words from its particular pool… Gomer, eldest son of the patriarch Japheth, handed it
down to his descendants, the Gomerians, from whom the Celts draw their origin, according to
Callimachus, according to the cosmographer Merula and some others… Before having the
name of Celtic language, it was called the language of the Titans, a name they gave
themselves in order to be feared and respected by other peoples. They were also named
Celtae, Galli, and Galatae, synonymous words which all mean powerful, or valorous
warriors… Hence comes the fact that in the Teuton, or German language and in the other
languages of Europe, there is an endless number of Celtic words which are simpler than
theirs; since the majority are of one syllable, and that those of Latin who come from there (to
say nothing about the others) are of two syllables… It is a rather general rule in almost all the
languages that the longest and widest words come from shorter and simpler, which are
consequently their roots “. (Father F. GREGORY of ROSTRENEN, Celtic Dictionary 1732.)Is
it needed to specify that this assertion as well as the following one, have nothing to do with
the true truth of the evolution of languages and dialects of Mankind? The need for having a
good knowledge of the various Celtic languages of the past or present, even of the common
Old Celtic language, if we want to understand something in our idea of the universe and in our
spirituality as well as in the predestined role of the Celtic-minded people in the world since the
disappearance of Arthur, remains nevertheless.
Theophile-Malo Corbet of La Tour d’Auvergne, a man impassioned of Breton linguistics, has
also tried, in the 18th century, to show that the Celtic language; which he believed preserved
without much evolution in the Breton; was the mother language of “pre-babelian” mankind.
With more or less success and not without excess. According to him indeed, Adam, Eve, and
the snake, would have spoken Breton in the Garden of Eden, and God or the Demiurge too,
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of course!At the risk of falling out with some of our Parisian pen-friends, let us notice that
France at this time was really the homeland of Celtomaniacs and of Druidomaniacs.In order
to stick to old Breton language, which concerns our readers more closely, the abstract
vocabulary that we know has almost always equivalents in Irish language; what shows that
the Celts of the Irish Early Middle Ages, members of a society not very different from that of
Ancient Celtica, were therefore familiar with abstract ideas as indissolubility, opposition,
compassion, negligence, privilege. Having said that in order to keep to the first two letters of
the alphabet.
As we have had already the opportunity to say, on the Continent also the god-or-demon
Ogmius was supposed to have invented the language, at the very least its mastery.
I did not know what to make of it, and was beginning to feel somewhat nettled, when I was
addressed in admirable Greek by a Celt who stood at my side, and who besides possessing a
scholarly acquaintance with their national science, proved not to be unfamiliar with our own.
He told me, Noble stranger; I see this fresco puzzles you: let me solve the riddle. We Celts
connect eloquence not with Hermes, as you do, but with the mightier Heracles.Nor need it
surprise you to see him represented as an old man. It is the prerogative of eloquence that it
reaches perfection in old age; at least if we may believe your poets, who tell us that…
Youth has a wandering wit
Whereas old age has wiser words to say than youth.
Thus we find that from Nestor's lips honey is distilled; and that the words of the Trojan
counselors are compared to the lily, which, if I have not forgotten my Greek, is the name of a
flower. Hence, if you consider the relation that exists between tongue and ear, you will find
nothing more natural than the way in which our Heracles, who is eloquence personified,
draws men along with their ears tied to his tongue. Nor is any slight intended by the hole
bored through that member because I recollect verses in one of your comic poets in which we
are told that…There is a hole in every glib tongue's tip.
Indeed, we refer the achievements of the original Heracles, from first to last, to his wisdom
and persuasive eloquence. His shafts, as I take it, are no other than his words: swift, keen-
pointed, true-aimed to do deadly execution on the soul. And, in conclusion, he reminded me
of our own phrase: “winged words.”
(Lucien of Samosata, Introductory lecture: Heracles. Heracles who is known under the local
Celtic name Ogmius).
As we saw it also higher, Diodorus of Sicily as for him (book V, chapter XXXI) mentioned in
his writings that the language of the Celts and therefore of druids, was the language of the
gods: “They speak, as it were, the language of the gods… they are homophonon.”
This major topic of druidism (the Celtic a language cherished of the gods, chosen language of
the gods, language invented by a god, in short divine language) survived until Christian
medieval Ireland.
According to the Lebor Gabala Erenn or Auraicept Na n-Éces and other legends of the Irish
folklore on this subject; a person by the name Fenius Farsa (Phoeniusa, Phenius, Féinius,
Farsaid, Farsaidh) would have gone, indeed, with Goídel mac Ethéoir, Íar mac Nema and 72
disciples, in the biblical country of Shinar, in order to study the languages resulting from the
destruction by God or the Devil of the tower of Babel (Nimrod).Let us leave aside the
theological problem that the sudden jealousy of an initially inattentive God-or-Devil causes; let
us leave aside also, for the moment, the question of knowing why the Everlasting One, in
Babel, acts in the way of a court sentencing a monopoly to split up in the name of competition
and diversity. However, it is obvious that our time is returning at a former stage. A revolution
fraught with serious consequences happened. A rising curve, as old as Mankind, has just
been reversed. The ethnographic reports come from all the continents confirm us indeed that
the languages disappear from now on more quickly than they are born (one every 15 days,
this change of direction occurred in the second half of the 20th century).And this, contrary to
the declared intention , with his one’s hand on one’s heart, of all what our planet counts as
nice and smart people (journalists, intellectuals, artists, the republican, royalist, democrat
politicians of right or left wing and so on).They march each morning in the streets in closed
ranks; ready to throw themselves bare-chested into the line of machine gun fire in order to
defend and to promote diversity against the horrible dictatorships of the Nazo-Bolshevists or
Hitlero-Trotskyists. What courage!But when evening fell, in the concrete intimacy of their real
life, their left hand (or right-hand) demolishes conscientiously in their way of life or of being all
that they worked out in favor of diversity, in the course of the day, in high words. You said
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schizophrenia?? Double speak?? Hypocrisy, yes, quite simply! As during the time of the war
in Libya where NATO never waged war in 2011 but performed intensive protections of
civilians in Tripoli and Sirte on behalf of the UN and on behalf of the French Minister for
defense (Mr. Longuet) who “shoots down” (sic) tanks. Who does not destroy them as you and
me but who shoots down them. As if they were flying perhaps. Like magic carpets of the
same name!
So many saints on earth and so little results! The reality is that there was never on Earth
such standardization of languages, cultures, peoples, and that it is to the concrete action, in
the daily life, of all these supposed defenders of diversity that we owed it.Exactly in the same
way that the decline of the revolutionary ideal on the social level matched the rise of
antiracism. It is indeed easier to fight for fine guiding principles of which concrete result
affects mainly the others, and for example the popular classes, than to accept a deep change
in one’s way of life: holiday home, imported fruits of the other end of the world, champagne,
big cars… and besides did not say one of our best experts: “If when you are fifty years old
you don’t have a Rolex watch, it is that you are a looser.”[Editor’s note. The publicist Jack
Seguela on February 17, 2009: “How can you reproach a President for having a Rolex watch?
Geez, everyone has a Rolex! “. And he added: “If, when you are fifty years old you have no
Rolex, it is that your life has been wasted “].But let us return to the story of the tower of Babel.
As the various languages had been already scattered here and there in the world, Fenius sent
his disciples to be looking for them while he remained on the spot in order to centralize the
research result. At the end of ten years of efforts, he was able to invent a new language, a
kind of Celtic Esperanto, based on the best of the 72 languages learned by his pupils, and he
called it Goidelic (Gael) in honor of Goídel son of Ethéoir. He also developed a variety of this
Goidelic language called Berla Fene, as well as another called Íarnberle, according to the
name of his second disciple, Íar mac Nema. Some authors compare this name to Iarmbelra,
name given to the P-Celtic which Hibernians or Erainn of Ireland would have spoken.
Variant of Auraicept.
Here the rudiments of the poets (Auraicept Na nEces) begin i.e., the beginning of any
lesson.When Fenius sent his 72 disciples to learn the languages in the world, Cai was the
one who went into Egypt. It is after his disciples had come back from their training, after they
had related their trips (i.e., their peregrinations and their work); that they asked this wise man
a language which would be to nobody other and which would belong to them in particular. It is
for this reason the chosen language was invented […] among the principal letters as it is
reported in the great book of wood; the language of the poets with which each one of them
has talks with the others and the common language which is taught to each one of the many
nations * etc., etc. “
- Cest: cia berla duna di berlaibh scchtmogat rotaisealbad do Fenius tossuch?
- Ni ansa: berla Feni.
- Question: which one of the seventy-two primary languages was revealed first by Fenius
Farsaid?
- Answer: it is not hard: the Celtic language **.
- Question: which is the reason why we may say that the Celtic ** is a chosen language? ***-
Answer: it is not hard: because it was worked out by Fenius Farsaid.
- Question: did the Celtic ** exist before being chosen?
- Answer: yes, since the first 72 languages in the world can’t be found in another way. Any
obscure sound existing in the other languages finds its place in Celtic language ** because of
his clearness which exceeds by far that of all the other languages.
- Question: who is the disciple of the School of Fenius who was in charge to bring it back?
- Answer: it is not hard: Gaedel, son of Ether, son of Toe, son of Barcham of Scythia.
- Question: and what did he bring back precisely from Scythia?- Answer: all, except for the
obscurities the bards added thereafter.
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* The nations in question are to be the whole of the peoples of the time speaking a Celtic
language, of course, considering the context.
** Gaelic in Ireland, of course. Or more precisely the berla feni in our text.
*** Or beloved by God-or-demons more exactly.
! --- - --------------------- ---------------- !
Cest: nach fellsamnacht in Gædhealg?Ni ansa !
There was indeed a philosophical or religious language, common to all the high-knowers at
the time of the independent and free Great Celtica, that of Ambicatus. The whole of the words
and of the turns of phrase the druids used for speaking with the god-or-demons and also
possibly, the language in which the aforementioned god-or-demons expressed themselves to
speak to men.Altogether the equivalent of the language of the famous Greek shaman Olenos,
but for the Sidh god-or-demons and not for those of Olympus.Olen was, according to the
legend, Lycian or Hyperborean, i.e., born in a country where Apollo liked to stay. He looked
the author of the anthem in honor of the virgins Opis and Arge, companions of Apollo and
Diana. He arrived, it was said, in Delos, coming from Hyperborea or Lycia, and it is him who
had written the majority of the old anthems which were sung on this island. Nomes are also
ascribed to him. i.e., probably a kind of very simple stanza, combined with certain fixed tunes,
and proper to be sung in the round dances of a chorus.Lastly, it is to Olen that some people
ascribe the invention of the epic verse or dactylic hexameter. If this opinion has somewhat
base, Olen would be even previous to the Thracian bards about whom we spoke higher;
because the lines of verse which were spread under their name are precisely some
hexameters, and prove, whether authentic or not, it was a metric they had had to use. But it
hardly seems possible to draw up a chronology from such vague words as those of priestess
Boeo, quoted by Pausanias. The epos, or epic line of verse, which gave its name to epic later,
is as old, in all likelihood, as Greek poetry itself. It was the only line of verse in use during
centuries and for all the kinds of poetry, not only before Homer, but until the time of Callinus
and Tyrtaeus. If Olen existed, it must therefore be dated back to the eighth century. The name
of Olen is linked to the introduction into the Greek islands of the worship of Apollo. He would
have been the first to exercise the function of the priest of this god-or-demon, i.e., to give
answers in lines of verse (hexameters) to those who came and consulted him.
But let us return to our sheep! In Ireland this language gave two distinct dialects. Íarmberla or
Iarnbelre, a Brittonic language of the first Irishmen or Erainn (Hibernians) which became only
a word in the local tradition; and the berla filid, or “language of Fene” , the “language of
poets,” sometimes still known as berla na filid. The berla na filid, was a difficult and
complicated language, reserved for the veledae and the druids.The border between this
“language of poets” and the common language of the rest of men was most probably the
same one as the one which separated the common language from that of the god-or-demons.
In other words, the whole of the words and of the expressions used to speak to the god-or-
demons and also the language in which the god-or-demons expressed themselves to speak
to men, as we said.
We owe to the chance of a story; the Echtra Cormaic i Tir Tairngiri ocus Ceart Claidib
Cormaic, “The Cormac’s adventures in the land of Promise and the decision of Cormac
concerning the sword“; at the same time according to the Book of Ballymote and the Yellow
Book of Lecan, as an introduction to the chapter on ordeals; an authoritative opinion about
what had perhaps become in the long run, more the language of a class than that of the gods.
The nobles of the men of Erin declared that every man should be arranged according to
what was due to himself, both kings, ollaves, fools, landholders and soldiers. For they were
sure that the arrangement made that day would be that they would abide therein forever. But
poets alone had judicature from the time that Amarogenos (Amairgen) White knee delivered
the first judgment in Erin till the dialog, in Emain Macha, of the two Sages *, that is to say
Fercertne the Poet and Nede son of Adna, concerning the robe of druids doctor (ollave). Very
obscure to everyone indeed seemed the speech which the poets uttered on that occasion,
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and the legal decision which they delivered was not clear to the kings and to the (other)
poets.These men alone, say the kings, have their judgment, skill and knowledge. We do not
understand what they say!Well, then, says Cunocavaros (Conchobar), it will be different from
today. The poets will keep the privilege to judge as they want their internal affairs, but for the
rest every one shall take their shares of it.So the poets were then deprived of their judicial
power save only what was proper to them; and each of the men of Erin took his share of the
judicature.”
* The colloquy of the two sages or Imacallam in da thuarad is indeed a rather obscure and
difficult text.
! --- ----------- ---------------------------- --- !
Ancient histories relate that one Gaidelus, a grandson of Phaenius, after the confusion of
languages which followed the fall of the tower of Babel (Nimrod), was deeply skilled in various
languages. On account of this skill, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, gave him his daughter Scota for a
wife. Since, therefore, the Irish, as they say, derive their original lineage from these two,
Gaidelus and Scota, as they were born, so are they called Gaels and Scots. This Gaidelus,
they assert, formed the Irish language, which is therefore called Gaidelach, as if it were
selected from all languages” (Geraldus Cambrensis. Topographia Hibernica, distinction III,
chapter VII).
It is obviously a tall story which mixes a little everything and without any connection with
historical reality, but the traditional principle is kept by Gerald: the Celtic is still a chosen
language.
Since when Irishmen or Bretons did believe in these fables about Fenius Farsaid, Egypt,
Adam and Eve, etc.?IT’S DIFFICULT TO SAY!This topic of the Celtic chosen language or
more exactly beloved by the gods, as the Greek texts about the Hyperboreans make us
think , was already old in Ireland at the time of Geraldus Cambrensis in the 12th century.The
arrival of Christianity and of its third-rate underculture based on the Bible is, of course, the
cause of the most part of all these pseudoscientific aberrations.But how the learning of Bible
could make our intellectuals run off the line at this point ? The dogma of the revelation? And if
these legends were based, partly or entirely, on some pre-Christian bases, amplified or
deviated by Christianity? For example, on a myth about Ogmius?
Let us not forget that the Auraicept mentions not only the Berla Fene but also the Iarnbelre,
name given to the P-Celtic language Hibernians or Erainn would have spoken.It is obvious
that the druidic god-or-demon of language, Ogmius, was divided in two in Ireland, and that he
contributed in particular to give the mythical Fenius Farsaid.This name, in Gaelic, was
undoubtedly to be Fene Farsaid: the “Fene” Farsaid. This word still exists with the
orthography Fearsaid in Gaeilge (current Irish) in the meaning of the axis or spit, but also of
the spindle. Fhearsaid is there, moreover, the name of Orion Shield.In the circumstance it can
be only the Christianization of a very old idea of the linguistic or ethnic origins. Did God or the
Demiurge in the beginning speak in Celtic language to men as Theophile-Malo Corbet of La
Tour d’Auvergne thought? Did God or the Devil inspire word for word the first druidic
reflections on him?It is impossible to be as categorical, of course, today, as the Frenchmen
like La Tour d’Auvergne, despite the whole sympathy the efforts of this brave Celtomaniac of
the 18th century can inspire to us. Our answer to this question today can be only no, he
didn’t, and yes he did, at the same time.Yes if by God-or-Demiurge, we understand
Ogmius.No if by God-or-Devil, we understand the Supreme Fate which rules the worlds.The
important druidic idea involving Ogmius, having led by successive distortions to the legend of
Fenius Farsaid, undoubtedly answered this interrogation.No, God did not speak in Celtic
language, but the old Celtic is the only language capable as well as possible to translate the
basic concepts of any self-respecting human being. Thanks to its precision, precision due to
its faculty to invent compound words, that exceeds by far that of many other languages. Many
theological concepts obscure or difficult to express in other languages, find their best
expression in the Celtic language, because of its clearness.For example « devogdonioseu »
which means « belonging to gods and men »,meeting place with the divinity,
commensality.Cato the elder. Origins. Book II. Fragment No. 34. “Generally, Celtica seeks in
the most industrious way two things: the art of the war and to speak subtly.”Following the
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example of the ancient high knowers of the religious type, we can therefore put forward that
the Celtic myths too are messages inspired by the search for the divinity.It is not a question,
of course, to maintain these messages were thus conveyed in their literal word for word, since
God or the Demiurge does not speak particular human language, whether it is Hebrew, Latin
or Arabic (sorry for our Muslim friends and the Quran); but only that they were then perceived,
in a way, in an inborn manner, by the Celts who were predestined to do it, and the druids *
were their (better) interpreters, then expressed in their way with this language. Example.
Manes of the dead do not exist! The souls and the universe are indestructible, but one day
only fire and water will prevail! Neither the souls as well as the minds can neither perish nor to
go to hell. Death is only the middle of a long life!
It goes without saying God or the Demiurge had never used these formulations exactly but of
all the sentences of the human languages those are still the ones which convey best the
divine verisimilitude on this subject. However that to which the majority of the human beings
aspire.
In other words. God or Devil did not speak Celtic, because he does not speak in human
language (contrary to what the Jews or the Muslims affirm, and the primordial druidic myths
therefore were not dictated by him, word for word). But the Celts even after the
disappearance of Arthur have always formed a people predestined to understand better than
whomever the divine calls. And for this reason the aforementioned Celtic language therefore
was held in a way for a chosen language also, or more exactly beloved by the gods, to take
over this idea common to the majority of the Greek texts dealing with the Hyperboreans.
N.B. It goes without saying that such a faculty concerned only the basic message, its broad
outlines, its mysticism, its spirituality; not the details or ramblings which were added to it then
during the centuries.
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INDIVIDUAL OPINION OF THE DIKASTES
JOHN-PIERS MARTIN.
IN SHORT the only true God of Celts has always been Fate and there is God only Fate, since
the former high knowers had turned “haphazardness” (sic) into a God or Demiurge. At least
according to St Columba or Colum Cille of Iona: “I do not adore the voice of the birds
neither the haphazardness, neither a son, nor a woman. My druid is the son of God… etc.
“The god-or-demon Ogmius gave to men 72 primordial languages, but the Celts were the only
ones to find their way with a language in which all was clear and luminous, and in which no
obscurity exists.Any obscure sound existing in the other languages finds its explanation in
Celtic language. Thanks to Fenius Farsaid!THE CELTS ARE A CHOSEN LANGUAGE. THE
CELTIC TOO IS A CHOSEN LANGUAGE, AMONG ALL (preferably to 71 others). And the
druids ** are its better interpreters.
LET US BE SERIOUS! The assertions of the Irish tradition are completely whimsical and are
only an example more of the third-rate under culture of the Christian monks in the Middle
Ages. The only thing having probably existed it is a possible Italo-Celtic unity, somewhere in
Central Europe, at an unspecified date.
In addition to the territory located between the Rhine, the Alps, the Mediterranean, the
Pyrenees, the Atlantic, the Channel and the North Sea, except for some areas speaking
Iberian languages; it was also the language of the peoples in Great Britain, of the various
Celts in the Danubian Basin and in the Balkans (the Scordisci of Belgrade for example), of the
Cisalpine Celts in North Italy and also of the Galatians in Asia Minor (current Ankara).There
was, moreover, still possible mutual comprehension and at different levels, with the other “P”
or “Q” Celtic languages. It was a great language of civilization, and research brought the
evidence of that.The ancient Celtic language, which was therefore one of the main vehicular
languages of the Antiquity, was not less than the Greek, and was even superior to Latin on
certain points ( particularly as regards the precision of the expressions).It was not at all an
idiom of “Barbarians” to whom Rome should have brought “Civilization “. The account of the
Roman jurist Domitius Ulpianus, known as “Ulpian” (c. 170/228), shows it.For him indeed, the
last wills written in Celtic language had as much value as the documents written in Latin or in
other languages. “Fideicommissa quocumque sermone relinqui possunt not solum latina uel
graeca, sed etiam punica uel gallicane uel cuiuscumque gentis” (Dig. Book XXXII tit. I, § 11).
Wills can also be left in any language, not only in Latin or Greek, but also in Carthaginian,
Celtic, or the idiom of any nation whatsoever.”
If Ulpian had considered the Celtic language as a simple local dialect of uncultivated
peasants, he would not have thus included it in the list of languages recognized by him as
valid from the point of view of the law; and on an equal footing with Greek or Latin.With all
due respect to the pseudo-anti-racists in vogue, misled in a fight aiming at a legitimate goal,
of course, but lacking in any pertinence, with regard to the aforementioned goal, in any logic;
and which can therefore only make them passably ridiculous, even to dishonor them from the
intellectual point of view (as regards the rigor or the fitting with the effect intended, of the
reasoning). It is not by unceasingly repeating to the average citizen that the members of the
Ku Klux Klan too are some immigrants for example, that you will prevent them necessarily
from being white supremacist racists and anti-Black anti-Catholic anti-Jews. Because they too
are also only descendants of immigrants on this land, they know it very well! We all are
besides descendants of immigrants on this Earth, and even the Amerindians or the
Aboriginals in Australia too are only descendants of immigrants. Come a little earlier, that’s
all! That does not prevent racism necessarily because racism is by no means a feeling or an
idea being based especially, and mainly, on the ignorance of the we all are descendants of
immigrants. Nor even on the rejection or on the fear of the other (although to be afraid of what
can harm to you, even of the unknown, is a reaction quite human, perfectly normal, healthy
and logical, and therefore calling for a positively adequate and pertinent answer, not for an
anathema). Racism has many other roots, many other deeper causes that the simple
ignorance of this or of that!
Our knowledge as regards vocabulary progressed much since the 19th century, a time when
academics sincere but completely unaware of the Celtic languages still spoken in their time;
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could affirm that the Celtic language had bequeathed to us only a few tens of words (150 or
180?) And that enabled us to discover that this idiom has handed down to the languages of
Western Europe many more words than it is generally imagined. It is enough to see the
etymological dictionaries or the monumental work of Von Wartburg, to realize it. It is not a
question for us, of course, to claim that Shakespeare’s language, even Lafayette and
Moliere’s language, is only hardly evolved Celtic. Or to deny the contribution of Latin in the
formation of or language. But many Latin words having had almost identical Celtic equivalents
(example rex/regina in Latin, rix/regena in Celtic, king/queen) many words, therefore, are in
fact at the same time of Latin and Celtic origin. When they are not purely indigenous. Let us
repeat it once again; the Celtic language played a part much more important than it is
generally believed in the formation of our language. As well as in the formation of the Globish
via the Anglo-Norman besides.It is not necessary besides to be astonished with that, since
Latin and Celt came from the same sub-group of Indo-European languages known as Proto-
Italo-Celtic.Even statistical observation through the etymological examination of the various
regional languages and dialects, Oïllitain (language of oil) as much as Occitan (language of
oc) Catalan or Franco-Provencal (Switzerland, Aosta Valley).
Trails to be exploited or to confront in order to reconstruct the old Celtic language.
Ancient attested forms in Latin as well as Greek books.Archeological contributions of various
European countries (inscriptions and graffiti).Etymological suggestions of the linguists of last
centuries and of various countries.Medieval or modern Celtic languages.Critical etymological
analysis of the numerous “low-Latin”words (to spot the borrowing).The attested numerous
proper nouns (many are speaking for themselves).Etc., etc.Great progress was accomplished
and recent publications offer good outlines now.The book by Pierre-Yves Lambert (Errance
Editions).The Dictionary of Jean-Marie Ricolfis (Lugos Circle).The Dictionary of Xavier
Delamarre (Errance Editions).As the Gaulish language as we could see was a major branch
of Old Celtic, we can compensate for most of its gaps by drawing from the linguistic treasure
of its mother language, the Old Celtic.
But what is known of old Celtic language? Many things if the same method as for the Gaulish
itself is used.
In the first time (and from the Gaulish lexicon thus established).
Ancient attested forms in books as well Latin as Greek but pertaining to other Celtic
languages.Archeological attestations of the words of other Celtic languages.Etymological
suggestions of the linguists of the last centuries (in order, of course, to collect the maximum of
Celtic words, reconstructed, but not directly witnessed).
In a second time (to still enrich this Celtic lexicon already well developed).The numerous
words so elucidated of the huge ancient pan-Celtic onomastic file.The critical study of the
place names of Celtic origin.The comparison between the medieval Celtic languages and the
current Celtic languages.
We can thus reconstruct an old Celtic glossary comprising approximately about fifteen
thousand words.
The common old Celtic is the language from where all the known Celtic languages are come
out to date. Lepontic language of the Golasecca civilization (North Italy, Lake Region - 700
before our era). Celtiberian (Spain - 300 before our era). Gaulish (Belgium France
Switzerland North Italy - 300 before our era). Brittonic (Great Britain + 100). Welsh language
(Wales + 800). Cornish (Great Britain, Cornwall County + 800. Extinct in the 18th century).
Breton language (France, Armorica + 800). Íarmberla or Iarnbelre, Brittonic language of the
first Irishmen or Erainn (Hibernians). Manx or Mannish (extinct in the 20th century). The Erse
or Gaelic of Scotland. And finally Irish or Gaelic of Ireland (oghamic + 450, old Irish + 750).
Below an example of text written in this language.
Batar Tuathai De Danann i n-indsib tuascertachaib an domuin, aig foglaim fesa & fithnasachta
& druidechtai & amaidechtai & amainsechta combtar fortilde for suthib cerd ngenntlichtae.
Ceitri cathrachai ir-rabatar og fochlaim fhesai & eolais & diaboldanachtai. i. Falias & Goirias,
Murias & Findias. A Falias tucad an Lia Fail bui a Temraig. Nogesed fo cech rig nogebad
Erinn. A Gorias tucad an tsleg boi ac Lug. Ni gebtea cath fria no frisinti an bidh il-laimh. A
Findias tucad claidiub Nuodon. Ni terládh nech dei o dobirthe asa idntiuch bodhuha, & ni
gebtai fris. A Murias tucad coiri an Dagdai. Ni tegedh dam dimdach uadh. Cetri druid isna
cetri cathrachaib-sin. Morfesae bai a Falias. Esras boi hi nGorias. Uiscias boi a Findias.
Semias bai a Murias. It iad sin na cetri filid ocar' foglaindsit Tuata De fios & eolas.
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* This poem ascribed to St Columba of Iona (M’Oenuran) is often put forward but in a
truncated way (Christ is my druid, etc.) by various authors, in order to suggest a quite
improbable compatibility between druidism and Christianity. All that it shows it is that saint
Colum Cille did not have very clear ideas, yes indeed!
** The True ones.
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CELTIC LANGUAGES
FROM A SCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW.
One calls “Gaulish” the language attested by various quotations and some ancient pieces of
evidence (inscriptions, etc.) and by extension what a huge onomastics reveals of it (on
condition that its declinable endings, very often Latinized in the historical accounts, are
reconstructed. The ancient shape of the words recognized as “of Celtic origin,” and pointed
out in the former area of the Gaulish settlements, are also attributed to this language. In other
words, we define as “Gaulish” the Celtic language of which we find, in some way or another,
attestations on the territories having formed a part of the three Gauls (Gallia in Greek).This
language was the principal derivative of an older Celtic language that some linguists hold for
a common Celtic (but this thesis of the homogeneity or unicity of an original mother language)
is disputed.This idiom (before its accelerated evolution at the time of the Roman empire),
nevertheless represented the Celtic “koine" well, maintained by the high knowers, as a pan-
Celtic common language. It is obvious, on the other hand, that this common Celtic language
varied according to areas, and was different here and there, by various borrowing to the
vocabularies of the “substrates” due to the former populations.
The Gaulish is a dead language, like Latin or old Greek, with this (considerable) difference it
is not taught in the schools since it lacks the support of a written literature.What we do know
of this language currently?First its position in the family of Indo-European languages. It
pertains to the family of the Celtic languages and in this one, to its branch known as P- Celtic,
of which current descendants are the Breton, Cornish and Welsh language; while the two
Gaelic languages, Irish (Gaeilge) but also Scot or Erse (Gaidhelach) as well as the Manx,
result from the other branch known as Q-Celtic. The Celtic languages pertain to a subgroup
known as Proto-Italo-Celtic, from which Italic languages, and particularly Latin or Tocharian,
resulted. The closest “cousin” subgroups were Thracian-Illyrian and Germanic languages.
These three subgroups and some others pertained to the Western group called “kentum” of
the Indo-European languages, the Eastern or “Aryan“ group being called “satem” (according
to their way of pronouncing the word “hundred“).The Gaulish was consequently an
evolutionary facet of this Celtic language, of which the high-knower of the druidiaction
(druidecht) carried out maintenance, while playing then in a way for this language, the role of
members of an academy.
Specialists call Old Celtic in the same way all which is attested in the area of ancient Celtic-
speaking world, and which is linguistically homogeneous (independently therefore of the
regional differences), whether it is some Gaulish itself or not.They also call common Celtic all
what etymological going up, or inferences from more recent Celtic languages, or etymologies
of the borrowing from Celtic noted in other languages, make it possible to reconstruct, with
the help of some precautions.We come thus to the quintuple of what can be listed as properly
Gaulish. But we should not be deluded: it is there a synthesis Gaulish, like the two great
regional languages of France that are Breton or Occitan, rather artificial and got in a way
through distillation. The words of this so reconstructed language are therefore not necessarily
those which were used by the Gauls, who used perhaps various synonyms or some more
idiomatic turns of phrase.But if it is the case, these so reconstructed by synthesis in our still
words, are nevertheless very close (since elaborated from the pool from which this language
drew its substance). And therefore they nevertheless would undoubtedly have been
understood, because the new discoveries (of inscriptions) often validate these so
reconstructed words.
What does one know today quantitatively speaking, of this language? Much as regards
vocabulary, but still not much as regards grammar.These gaps in this field, fortunately, did not
get much in our way with regard to our comprehension of the calendar of Coligny, since it is
especially made of various abbreviations.The inscription of Chamalieres delivered us a
certain number of short sentences, and that of La Vayssiere in the Larzac also, but in later
Gaulish, already more or less contaminated by Latin. Same thing for the Chateaubleau tile.
As for the inscriptions of Botorrita, in Iberian characters, they are not in Gaulish, but in
Celtiberian, and that of Rom is only a bad Latin text, cursing people with Celtic
names.According to what we can know of it, there was in Gaulish language, probably, rather
numerous irregular verbs, like much of idiomatic turns of phrase.A certain number of words
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attested in inscriptions, besides, are still not really well understood by specialists and, in the
absence of all new discovery, we know less about the Gaulish itself than about the old Celtic.
Wikipedia online encyclopedia.The weakness of the written documents explains it is very
difficult to reconstruct the morphology of the language. It is almost certain that there existed at
least five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative and instrumental/comitative; the
existence of a locative is supposed for the declension of the o-stem; the vocative is not very
sure.The declension, for what is known, represents a kind of intermediate state between
Greek and Latin. The o-stem, best attested (which is equivalent to the second Latin and
Greek declension), is declined as below (the declension of the instrumental plural is not sure).
It is to note that, as in the modern Romance languages, the modern Celtic languages have no
longer the neuter gender hence the difficulty in defining the gender of numerous terms.
As for the verb and its conjugation, it is even more unclear. It seems that the Gaulish, like the
Greek, preserved from the Indo-European language some - mi (athematic) and o (thematic)
verbs. It would have, following the Greek example, five moods: indicative, subjunctive,
optative, imperative and infinitive (in the form of a verbal noun) and at least three times:
present, future, preterit.Syntax, at this stage, is still almost unknown. Exerts identified some
coordinating conjunction, perhaps some relative, anaphoric and demonstrative pronouns. The
order of the sentence appears to be subject/verb/complement.
The first ten ordinal numbers.
1.Cintuxos (Welsh cyntaf, Breton kentañ, old Irish cétae, modern Irish céad). First.
2.Allos (Welsh ail, Breton all, old Irish aile, modern Irish eile = “other” or “second”).
3.Tritos (Welsh trydydd, Breton trede, old Irish treide). Third.
4.Petuarios (Welsh pedwerydd, Breton pevare, old Irish cethramad, modern Irish ceathrú).
Fourth.
5.Pimpetos (Welsh pumed, Breton pempvet, old Irish cóiced, modern Irish cúigiú). Fifth.
6.Suexos (Welsh chweched, old Irish seissed, modern Irish séú). Sixth.
7.Sextametos (Welsh seithfed, Breton c’hwec'hvet, old Irish sechtmad, modern Irish seachtú).
Seventh.
8.Oxtumetos (Welsh wythfed, Breton eizhvet, old Irish ochtmad, modern Irish ochtú). Eighth.
9.Nametos (Welsh nawfed, Breton navet, old Irish nómad, modern Irish naoú). Ninth.
10.Decametos (Welsh degfed, Breton dekvet, old Irish dechmad, modern Irish deichniú).
Tenth.
Elements of vocabulary.
Aballo: apple tree. Abolos: maple. Ago: fight. Aiu: eternity. Alauda: lark. Alausa: shad. Alisia:
white-beam. Ambactos: ambassador. Anextlomaros: great protector. Ardesia: slate. Bagauda:
resistance fighters, combatant. Bagos: beech. Balcos: wallow. Benna: skip or dumpster or
wagon. Bardos: bard. Bascauda: pool, tarp. Battuere: to beat. Baua: mud. Bebros: beaver.
Beccos: beak. Bedu: section of canal millrace. Bertiare: to rock. Bertium: cradle. Betua: birch.
Bilio: a tree, log, block (of wood). Blato: corn. Bostia: bushel. Bote: cattle shed, booth. Braca:
trousers, pants, breeches. Braciare: to brew (beer). Bratu decantem: ex-voto. Brogilo: small
wood. Bruca: heather. Bucco: billy goat. Bunda: sluice, bung. Caballus: horse. Caio: quay.
Cambiare: to change. Cambo: rim. Camminus: path. Carruca: plow. Carrus: chariot.
Cassanos: oak. Cervesia: ale. Cnoua: a hazel nut. Coslo: a hazel tree, filbert. Crama: cream.
Crosus: hollow. Deruos: oak. Drappus: woolen fabric, a sheet. Druida: druid. Druto: thick.
Eburos: yew. Ercunia: oak grove, forest of oaks. Ganscaria: fallows. Glisa: clay. Gdonios: a
human being. Gutuater: priest in charge of the management of prayers, singing teacher. Ivos:
yew. Jauga: gorse. Landa: moor. Lemo: elm. Leuga: league =1, 5 mile. Liba: dregs. Loga:
grave. Maniaces: necklace. Meina: mine. Melatia: larch. Mesigu: whey. Multo: sheep. Nauda:
hollow of rather marshy soil, a tank. Onno: ash. Ordiga: toe. Pario: cauldron. Pettia: piece.
Prenno: tree. Salica: willow. Sapo: soap. Sapos: pine. Seluos: property (lugoseluos = which
belongs to Lug, slave of Lug). Slodia: luge. Soccos: plowshare. Sonnocingos: zodiac. Sudia:
soot. Talo: embankment, forehead. Tann: tannin. Tanno: live oak (holm oak). Taratrum:
auger. Tegia: house. Tinca: tench. Toma: tomme cheese. Tonna: barrel. Torco: torque.
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Uerna: alder. Uidu: tree, wood. Uidua: forest. Uo-caiton: undergrowth. Vassus: vassal.
Vidubion = Wood-hoe: voulge. Viriola: bangle.
Here below a few words of good old national language probably of Celtic origin now (this is
only a short sample, there is much more than 150 or 180, in any case much more than it is
believed: 1000 irreducibles according to the book published by Professor Jacques Lacroix -
Lemme Editions in Chamalières-).
Ambassador (ambactos).Arpent (arepennis).Bard (bardos).Beak (becco).Bran (brenno).Brave
(bragos).Breeches (bracca).Broach/Brooch (broccus = pointed, cf. Gaelic brog= awl, brocc =
badger).Budget (bulga).Car/Chariot (carros).Carpenter (from carros).Cavalry/Chivalry
(caballus = horse).Chamois (camox).Change (cambiare).Charge (carricare).Clan (clan,
cland).Coombe (cumba = valley).Cowl ( monk habit cucullus).Cream (crama).Dune
(duna).Encumber (comboro = dam).Frown (frogna = nose).Glean (glanos).Gob (gobs,
gobbed, gobbing, from gobos = mouth).Gown (gunna pelisse).Javelin (gabalaccos).Lance
(lancia).Land (landa).League (leuga =1, 5 mile).Lozenge (lausa).Luge (sludia).Mutton
(multo).Palfrey (para + veredus).Piece(pettia).Rock (rocca).Soap (sapo).Slogan (sluagh-
ghairm).Talus (talo= forehead).Tannin (tann).Tench (tinca).Tunnel/Ton (tonna).Truant (trougo
= bad boy)Valet (vassos).Vassal (vassos).Whiskey (uisge-beatha).Yew (ivos).
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SHORT GLIMPSE OF CELTIC LITERATURE.
When they meet together they converse with few words and in riddles, hinting darkly at
things for the most part and using one word when they mean another; and they like to talk in
superlatives, to the end that they may extol themselves and depreciate all other men [in
Greek hyperbole]. They are also boasters and threatening and are fond of pompous
language, and yet they have sharp wits and are not without cleverness at learning... It is a
custom of theirs that no one should perform a sacrifice without a "philosopher"; for thank
offerings should be rendered to the gods, they say, by the hands of men who are experienced
in the nature of the divine, and who speak, as it were, the language of the gods [they are
homophonon in Greek]” (Diodorus of Sicily, Book V, chapter XXXI). The genius of a nation is
always achieved through its language. The fact that the Celtic was a chosen language and
superior in their eyes, of course, has had as a consequence that the Celtic peoples were
always peoples sure of their predestination as regards spirituality, including and especially
after the mysterious disappearance of Arthur. From time immemorial, the Celt liked to reflect
on the world parallel to ours, generally designated by the name of hereafter.There is, indeed,
a little bit of all that among Celts, but there is also another thing. The idealism among them, a
particular idealism undoubtedly, is powerful; they cultivate with passion poetry and music.
They have the taste for the intellectual speculation, especially in the field of laws.Love for
music, of the harp initially then of the spellbinding pipes, for poetry, festivals, dress with
conspicuous colors, taste for stories and symbols, enigmas [traits already characteristic of the
ancient Celts, Diodorus of Sicily points out, as we could see]; allegories, triads, practice of a
naturalist religion, accompanied by the belief in another fantastic world… There is perhaps no
people among which the taste for extraordinary things and weirdness has been as sharp as
among Celts. All their literature, the religious as the secular one, is there to attest to this trait
really characteristic of their genius.According to Marx and his book on the Celtic literature, all
this literature at the same time professional, aristocratic and clerical, which was thus formed,
was going little by little to be of a more and more marked popular nature. The figures of the
god-or-demons and of the great heroes always had to be orally handed down by the
storytellers who made themselves heard from the village into the village; and also at the time
of the festivals which, since Antiquity, had still taken the form of celebration of heroic or
heroized dead, of sacrifices, of games in consecrated places, which resembled more
cemeteries than temples. This fairylike other world which remained beside the human world,
and in the margin of the Christian world, was a general and common to the Celtic world
tradition. The heroes came there, led by a fairy, or a saint having inherited the competences
of a god, either after a crossing over the seas, towards some islands to which normal men
did not have access. Sometimes they continued the conquest of marvelous objects which was
imposed on them by a higher will. A kind of incantation and of magic spell which was put on
them, often by the call of a king or of a messenger of the Other World, who asked for their
help. These fairylike people, aes sidhe in Irish, even at a later time, preserved the name of the
people of the goddess Anu (cf. Danu-bia), the Tuatha Dé Danann, who lived under the
hillocks, in underground residences and palaces. Women were the object of quarrels who
sometimes won the love of these people of the Other World or who, living in this Next World,
become on the contrary enamored of people on Earth. Some fights, some raids took place
there. There were miraculous births, marking the destiny of the makers of kingdoms, of the
founders of dynasties. The gift was the mark of the kingship as well as of the lordship. But to
the adventure imposed on the hero by this spell, this kind of positive taboo; the noble one and
the hero, slave of his word, his name and his ancestors, was bound to subject himself, more
than another, because of his origin. Metamorphoses temporarily changed men into animal
figures [shamanism?]. In the same way still in these stories which describe us the traveler in
the search for a marvelous world, islands beyond the seas to which death does not have
access. In this literature of the imrama or voyages, there is no doubt that the strange
traditions evoking some Heaven on Earth having survived for the elements of Mankind who
would not have been affected by the original sin; came to mingle, as James Carney saw, with
the accounts of voyages in fairylike country under the leading of the god-or-demons and of
the fairies. There is interlacing of the clerical tradition, preservative of the great topics of
classical antiquity, patrology and hagiography; with these accounts, these topics of tales,
these subjects at the disposal of the embroideries of poets, these mentions of nature; which
represented a kind of traditional patrimony of the class of filid, accepted by the Church and
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preserved by it. These filid carried as a professional class because of the political absence of
unity, which led to the multiplication of the courts and of the small princes claiming kingship.
All they called upon genealogists who could support their claims, evoke the glories, the fights,
and the exploits of the past, prepare or encourage those of the future. This aristocratic nature
of the society in which the Irish literature developed is not less important than the clerical
nature of the background which provides it its rhetoric and its examples. In the Celtic lives of
saints, saints and kings are in touch and relationship. The figures of the former god-or-
demons fallen into the rank of fairylike and marvelous heroes, kept going with their sons and
their companions whose tradition celebrates the exploits (Marx).
Whole generations devoted themselves, in the renunciation, the poverty even the continence,
to a life of great asceticism and to the culture of sacred sciences. These men were some
genuine leavens of the intellectual life and great leaders of soul/minds. This inexpressible
mixture of ardor and of austerity, of independence and of respect, of the traditions, of rustic
character but also of sharp sensibilities, of restricted imagination while remaining despite
everything, impetuous, in love with singularities, even often led to the most excessive
fantasies; all these traits, which form, in their very contrast, the religious temperament of the
former Celts, exerted an irresistible attraction to the most remote countries. One saw
foreigners, captivated by this burning piety as well as by this science, to run up next to the
insular masters of whom then they could no longer be detached.
In the last centuries of the Middle Ages, when the beautiful religious efflorescence had
ceased, the Celts still held under their spell European imagination, in another way. All the
people borrowed over and over again to this small politically shrunk and overcome race, its
literary fictions. Arthur, Lancelot, Perceval, Merlin, Tristan and Iseult, were known in any
country and enchanted innumerable generations. It is in the dreamy, melancholic and
passionate, imagination, of the race, that were worked out, if not formed, the most beautiful
fictions of the Middle Ages.
NOTE ON THE DEATH OF TRISTAN.
The commentators are generally very harsh with the second Iseult, Iseult of the White Hands
and make her only a common jealous wife. Very few are those who also sympathized with
her personal drama. Because in this impossible love story, everyone will be losing finally! It is
not a chance if the poor one is also called Iseult! But the love of Tristan for the first Iseult,the
blond-haired Iseult, is so heavily influencing that he will be in fact unable to have a true
wedding night with the second one. See the episode, very psychoanalytical before the word
existed (because our medieval bards did not need Freud to show a little perceptiveness) of
the ring. Most unhappy in effect, the most to be taken in pity, it is her! As for the story of the
black sail and of the white sail, it is quite simply brilliant!
When King Mark heard of the death of the lovers, he crossed the sea, and came into
Brittany; had two coffins decorated, one of chalcedony for Iseult, and one of beryl for Tristan.
He took their beloved bodies away with him upon his ship to Tintagel, and by a chapel to the
left and right of the apse he had their two tombs built round. But during the night there sprang
from the tomb of Tristan green and leafy wild rose, powerful in its branches and in the scent of
its flowers which, by climbing the chapel, sank into Iseult’s tomb. People of the country cut the
sweetbrier: on the following day it was born again, as green, as flowered, as long-lived. Thrice
they wanted to cut it down, but it was in vain. They told the marvel to King Mark, he forbade
them to cut the sweetbrier henceforth.”
The good trouveres of old time, Beroul and Thomas of Britain, Eilhart von Oberge and
Gottfried of Strasbourg, told this tale for lovers and none other.
Conclusion.
The Irish gods (or demons for the Church of course) , are not, or more exactly are not only a
“little people” of distorted dwarves or goblins, my pen-friends say leprechaunor corianeit
(because dwarves, or giants besides, are only a small part of them); most are on the contrary
great, handsome and even elegant. They are taller than the ordinary men and women as for
all that is bodily force, power, beauty, deportment, clothing, and they would remind rather of
the descriptions that classical writers have left to us. The fabulous and the supernatural one
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(Christian theologians would say preternatural) are among them imbued with reserve and
dignity. No problem of guilt, punishment or last judgment, never comes to disturb the serenity
of what Gerard Murphy not so long ago called the strange beauty of Celtic mythology. And it
is this strange beauty (the Christian theologians would say of the Devil) of the atmosphere in
the Other World of Aos Si, (Aes Sidhe) which gives to the Irish mythological cycle its
particular aspect.What we can consequently at least write in connection with all these
legends, therefore it is this.Diodorus of Sicily (book V, chapter XXXI) mentioned in full, as we
said, that the language of druids was the language of the god-or-demons. “They speak, as it
were, the language of the gods, they are homophonon.”And this major topic of druidism
survived in medieval Ireland since, according to Auraicept Na nEces too, the Celtic language
can be only a chosen language. Or more exactly beloved by the gods according to the Greek
texts speaking about Hyperboreans.According to Auraicept Na nEces there were indeed 72
languages after the destruction of the tower of Babel, but the Celts were the only ones to
have a language (Berla Fene? Or Iarnbelre?) being able to translate perfectly, by definition,
the message of the god-or-demons. Fate gave to men 72 primordial languages, but the Celts
were the only ones to have a language where all was clear and luminous and in which no
obscurity remained. Any existing obscure sound in the other languages found its meaning in
Celtic language. And this, thanks to Fenius Farsaid!At least if we understand all these old
texts well, of course.It is probable indeed that Ogmius was replaced by Fenius Farsaid in
these legends after their Christianization.
But who are the Celts all said and done?
Official French language of Paris which thinks to be the most precise language in the world in
the political or diplomatic field has the major flaw not to distinguish nationality from citizenship
(the ethnic origin and the state allegiance). It is the same word which is used for the
passports. What generally deprives of any intelligence the debates focusing on this subject in
Paris. There were nevertheless some States (the ex-Austro-Hungarian empire, the ex-USSR)
in which the citizenship and the state allegiance were carefully distinguished from the
nationality or ethnic membership.The nationality in the beginning was not a voluntary choice
of the individual but an ethnic origin (the word nation besides is of the same root as the Latin
verb meaning “to be born” nascio) independent of the will or of the free choice.The famous
definition of the nation given by Renan and in which the French intellectuals delight so
much,does not go beyond the borders of the hexagon (it is for example unknown in Israel)
and does not go back beyond the annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine by Germany in
1870, of which it is the only explanation. Before, Renan would have never said that! The man
of the famous prayer on the Acropolis was not sufficiently French intellectual to agree with
such a stupid interpretation of his remarks. According to Zeev Sternell his daily plebiscite
concerns only those having the same roots.These inconsistencies of the French journalistic
class are besides obvious when it is a question of the Vichy regime (1940-1944) which is
sometimes the true France sometimes not the true France.
Regarding ancient European history anyway, the language is the sign or the mark of what we
call today “nationality“; apart from the language, it is impossible to work out in this field an
exact identifying indication. One runs up then against the problem, very modern and only
modern, of the design of nationality. Can the Nazi who, in 1945, fled towards the United
States while lying on his past, be regarded as having really wanted in all honesty, share the
common destiny of this country, or its community of destiny ,in the way extolled by the
modern French interpreters of Renan's thought ?? And besides who knows Renan in the
United States apart from us? Are Irishmen speaking English at home... English or
Americans??Are our fellow countrymen who speak English …. British ? Are the Scots of the
Low-lands, English ?? The Greeks call the country of Joan of Arc of Lafayette and Napoleon,
Gallia, the Germans call it Frankreich. The Murid Wolofs of Saint-Louis in Senegal who
wanted no longer to be French in 1960 (date of the independence of this country with Leopold
Sedar Senghor, cantor of the decolonization and of the black identity) do nevertheless have to
be still regarded like French as the others, Breton or Alsatian, Flemish or Catalan, even
Corsican? Are the inhabitants of Liege in Belgium less French than the Muslim Wolofs of
Senegal?In the same way are Celts those who were or who wanted to be so, by the language
or a name inherited from a distant past? Or is it those who are still so, even if, sometimes,
they would like no longer being such?
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Are Helvetians become some Swiss citizens still Celts when they speak the language of
Lafayette and Napoleon and Voltaire in the west of the Sarine River and the language of
Goethe in the east of the aforesaid river? And if they are, are they so more or less, in fact, if
not in right, that the Irishmen of Dublin who speak no longer Gaelic, or that the Bretons of
Upper Brittany who speak Romance for ten centuries? And who before speaking Romance
(Gallo) was perhaps quite simply speaking another Celtic language (stele of Plumergat
vabros iiioovt atrebo agantobo durneogiapo, thesis of the Canon Falc'hun in connection with
the Gwenedeg dialect or the contrary, I do not remember any more very well, I was 25 years
old when I was interested in the question). In any case what it is certain, it is that the famous
Loth line 1 is the mark of the withdrawal of a language, not that of its maximum spreading).
The color of the heart, the nationality or the non-nationality of the heart, is a problem purely
intimate, psychological, therefore essentially political; as structuring as the very subjective
“Judeity” or “Arabity” in Palestine. A subjectivity that the most part of the French intellectuals
or politicians (journalists, etc.) still did not understand, or does no longer understand, because
they are fundamentally unable of empathy towards their fellow countrymen so much they are
prisoners of their microcosm!
What is indubitable, it is the Celts were, during a very long time, aware of a linguistic
relationship conveying and strengthening a community of culture and religion. Irish, Breton,
Gauls, had between them, during whole Antiquity, even during the Middle Ages, some close
relations. Specialists discovered for example without surprise, mentions of Gaulish
mercenaries in the accounts of the Irish Middle Ages...
The language therefore remains (with these very useful and fragile auxiliaries that are
anthroponymy and toponymy) in spite of the difficulties of detail, the main, if not the only
criterion, we have to determine the Celtic nationality of an ethnic group or of an individual (like
for example Dejotarus). And in this respect, we are all therefore a little some Sinn Feiners we
uns druidicists, but some not very Catholic Sinn Feiners, of course!
Closer to us but still very far, a few words now about the language of the manuscripts found in
Ireland or elsewhere but in Gaelic (several hundred: 2000 ? 3000 ?) All are not of the same
quality, all do not have useful information to bring to us.The style is sometimes flawed or
really clumsy (many repetitions, approximations, words or letters lacking, misspellings: see
with what scruple Windisch announces them in his Irische texte) for four good reasons.The
first reason is that the way to express oneself at the time, in relation to its way of thinking
perhaps, was very different from ours. We have a very good example of it with what concerns
numbers: the use to count through nine, twenty (score), or fifty. French kept some archaisms
besides dating back to this time. Example 80 = four (times) twenty hence quatre-vingt *(four-
twenty) . Trying to understand an ancient legal text written in Gaelic is to dive into another
universe, another way of thinking, of viewing the world, in short a kind of Atlantis more surely
disappeared than that of Plato. There is no need to travel to the other side of the planet (that,
it is some surface tourism most of the time, like it or not), to find some strange, unknown,
exotic, in short some lessons of humanity; it is enough for that to be dived in our more distant
past, that which is in a way under our feet, by opening wide our mind in order (paradoxically)
to go into ourselves , what is most important. Because there are adventures only internally.
As the poet said it very well:
Teicht do Róim:
Mór saído, becc torbai!
In rí chon·daigi hi foss,
Mani·m-bera latt,
Ní·fogbai.
Going to Rome;
A lot of trouble for little gain!
The king you seek thereIf you don't bring him with you,
You will not find him.
The second reason is that it was at the time, even if some Celts knew (Etruscan) writing as
soon as the seventh century before our era (the Lepontii), an oral literature, therefore by
definition without orthography.The third reason is due to the fact that there has been written
handing down, by men less and less specialized in this field since their energy was mainly
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devoted to Latin, and in any case beginning to no longer understand very well the profound
meaning of all these accounts. All kinds of careless mistakes in the copying of manuscripts
can therefore explain most simply, all this clumsiness.Lastly the fourth is due to the fact that
there has been an oral transmission in the evening by the fireside by men or women less and
less lettered in Gaelic even in the language become dominant among them, as the English
language grew on in their country, thus contributing in fact to impoverish still a little more the
world cultural heritage. And let us not hesitate to say it, the loss of Gaelic as a living language
of a people, numerous enough to continue to create in this field, formed an irrevocable loss
for Mankind. Unlike the Frenchmen of the twentieth century, the Irishmen of the time have at
least the excuse to have made themselves imposed, by oppression even by terror at certain
times, such a situation. And at least they did not sell their soul for a dish of lentils, everyone
cannot say as much about the subject.
* If there is another numeral element, after.
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BIBLE OF DRUIDISM.
SHORT LIST OF THE MAIN HANDWRITTEN STORIES OF IRELAND.
Foreword. To use the Irish or Welsh legends in order to reconstruct the Panth-eon (divine
pleroma) or the druidic mythology is impossible to get round, but will be still a true
challenge.BECAUSE THESE TEXTS WERE NEVER DESIGNED TO FORM A CLEAR,
COHERENT AND METHODICAL REPORT, OF DRUIDIC THEOLOGY.Their transcribers, the
Christian monks of the Middle Ages, saw them only as tales and legends coming from a
distant past, some literary and fictional works like these which will come later under the hand
of Chretien de Troyes. This short list is limited to the main titles. There are other ones, of
course, to be examined with a fine-tooth comb. These accounts were handed down to us in
writing only subsequently after Christianization, when the writing had become, with the
reading of the Bible, the single means of the divine Revelation. If that all these stories were
intended only for the enlightenment and the entertainment of the warrior class; what has as a
consequence that almost the whole speculative part of the teaching of the high knowers of the
druidiaction (druidecht) is missing; almost all the stories having been then expurgated of what
was contrary to the Christian doctrines, subsequently after the fifth century. Therefore let us
emphasize a thing well. The texts which follow are not therefore pure ancient pagan literature,
even slightly modernized. They contain, of course, some elements of oldest druidic
mythology, but inextricably mingled with elements coming close to the classical Greco-Roman
culture, or to the third-rate Judeo-Christian under culture of the time.In these tales of Irish
mythology, like the Ulster cycle, God-or-demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies,
appear to the living in concrete reality as well as in dreams. They reveal their presence or
disappear without man is able to know from where they come nor where they go back. They
can become invisible or interfere in human affairs. In the Fenian cycle, they are for example in
constant relationships with chiefs and warriors; they take part in their banquets, take part in
their entertainments and fight even alongside them.All these legends were preserved to us, in
variable forms besides, in four great manuscript collections. In these volumes, made of bound
sheets of parchment, appear side by side the most various texts: holy or secular works, in
verse or prose, hagiographic accounts, tales, catalogs of tales, stories, genealogies,
etymologies, annals, treatises on medicine or law, etc.
MAIN MANUSCRIPTS.
The book of Ballymote (Lebor Baile Mota). Contains mainly historical texts.
The book of the dun cow (Lebor na Huidre). Beginning of the 12th century.
The Yellow Book of Lecan (Leabhar Buidhe Lecain); 14th century. Contains the oldest version
of the cattle raid of Cooley.
The book of Leinster (Lebhar Laighneach or Lebar Na Núachongbála). Compiled in the
middle of the 12th century, but containing older texts. It includes a list of tales of the greatest
interest. This collection contains a complete version of the cattle raid of Cooley, as well as the
moving story of Deirdre.
The book of Fermoy (Leabhar Feirmoithe). 15th century.
THE GREAT BATTLES OF METAHISTORY .
Cath Maighe Tuireadh "The Battle of Mag Tured."
Cath Maighe Tuireadh Cunga " The Battle of Mag Tured at Cunga .
Cath Ruis na Rig " The battle of Ros na Rig ."
Foras Feasa ar Èirinn " History of Ireland " by Geoffrey Keating. The title actually means "The
Basis of Knowledge of Ireland."
Lebor Gabala Erenn Versions I, II, and III.
Lebor Gabala Erenn Version Micheal O'Cleirigh.
Lebor Bretnach"The Book of Britain" (Irish Nennius).
Oidhe Chloinne Tuireann "The fate of the children of Tuireann. »
MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE .
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Aislinge Oengusso " The Dream of Oengus ."
Altrom Tige Da Medar " The nourishment of the house of the two pails ".
Suidigud tellaich Temra " The settling of the manor of Tara ."
Tochmarc Etaine " The wooing of Etanna ".
Dindshenchas " Lore of places ."
Scel Tuain maic Cairill do Fhinnen Maige Bile inso sis " The Story of Tuan son of Cairill Told
to Finnen of Mag Bile ."
The colloquy between Fintan and the hawk of Achill." Incipit "Arsaidh sin, a eoúin Accla ."
THE DRUIDIC ANCIENT /NEW TESTAMENT * or the Ulster Cycle and legends concerning
the Hesus Cuchulainn.
Aided Chloinne Tuirean " The fate of the children of Tuireann . »
Aided Con Culainn " The Death of Cuchulainn."
Aided Con Roi " The Death of Cu Roi ."
Aided Oenfir Aife " The death of Aife's only son ."
Oided mac nUisnig " The exile of the sons of Uisnig ."
Oidheadh Chloinne Lir " The fate of the children of Lir."
Ces Ulad " The affliction of the Ulstermen ."
Compert Conchobair " The birth of Conchobar ".
Compert Con Culaind : the feast of the house of Becfoltaig " The birth of Cuchulainn et le
festin de la maison de Becfoltaig »".
Compert Mongan "The birth of Mongan".
De Chopur in dá Muccida "The quarrel of the two pig keepers".
De Gabáil in t-Sída " The taking of the Sid ."
Fled Bricrend " The Feast of Bricriu ."
Echtra Airt meic Chuind 7 Tochmarc Delbchaeme " The adventures of Art son of Conn."
Echtra Nerai " The adventures of Nera ."10th century.
Fled Bricrenn " The feast of Bricriu ."
Fled Bricrenn ocus Foglaim Con Culain (or Do Fhogluim Chonculainn) " The feast of Bricriu
and The training of Cuchulainn ."
Loinges mac nDuíl Dermait annso " The Exile of the Sons of Doel Dermait (the Forgotten
one) below ".
Loinges mac nUsnig " The Exile of the Sons of Uisliu ".
Macgnimrada Conculaind " The boyhood deeds of Cuchulainn ".
Mesca Ulad " The intoxication of the Ulaid or Ulster men ".
Noinden Ulad " The debility of the Ulstermen" .
Scél asa mberar co mbad hé Find mac Cumaill Mongán " The story where it is said that
Mongan was Vindos/Finn reincarnated ."
Serglige Conculainn inso sis 7 oenet Emire " The wasting sickness of Cuchulainn and the
only jealousy of Aemer below".
Siaburcharpat Con Culainn " the phantom chariot of the Hesus Cuchulainn ."
Tain Bo Regomon or Regamna "the cattle raid of Regamna."
Tain Bo Cualnge "The cattle raid of Cooley."
Tochmarc Emire " The Wooing of Aemer ."
Tochmarc Ferbae "The wooing of Ferb".
Tochmarc Luaine 7 Aidedh Aithairne Andso "The Wooing of Luaine and the Death of Athirne."
Togail Bruidne Da Derga " The Destruction of Da Derga's hotel ."
* This set contains some of the oldest known Irish documents and the civilization staged by
the Ulster cycle is undoubtedly similar to that of La Tène in Switzerland.
LEINSTER CYCLE OR FENIAN CYCLE (Vindos/Finn).
Acallam na Senorach " The colloquy of the old men."
Bruidean Caortainn " The fairy palace of the rowan trees ."
Cath Finntragha ann so sios .i. Oidhe Finn le fianaibh Eirionn 7 bas Duiri Duin rig an domhain
moir. "The battle of Ventry below i.e., the fate of Vindos/Finn with the Fenians of Ireland and
the death of Duire Donn the king of the great world.
Cath Gabhra "The Battle of Gabhra."
Fotha catha Chnucha " The cause of the battle of Cnucha ."
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Immacallam in da thuarad " The colloquy of the two sages ."
Macgnimartha Find " The Boyhood Deeds of Vindos/Find ."
Laoi Oisin in Tir na nOg " Ossian in the Land of Youth ."(Micheal Comyn 1750).
Toraigheacht Dhiarmada agus Ghrainne " The pursuit of Diarmat and Grannia ".
HISTORICAL CYCLE OR CYCLE OF KINGS.
Buile Shuibhne " The Frenzy of Suibhne ".
Tromdamh Gaire " The heavy hosting of Guaire ".
CONN AND CORMAC CYCLE.
Airne Fingen "Fingen’s night-watch."
Echtra Chormaic i Tir Tarngiri "Cormac’s adventures in the land of fairy."
Forbuis Droma Damhghaire " The Siege of Knocklong ."
Tecosca Cormaic "The instructions of King Cormac."
ADVENTURES, TRAVELS AND VISIONS .
Immram Brain maic Febail ocus a echtra andso sis " The voyage of Bran son of Febal and his
adventures below".
Immrama curaig Mail Dúin " The Voyage of Maelduin ."
Immrama hua Corra " The Voyage of the Ui Chorra. »
Immram Snedhghusa 7 meic Riaghla " The Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagla. »
MISCELLANEOUS .
Aislinge Meic Con Glinne "The vision of Mac Con Glinne."
Aithbe dam bés mora "The lament of the old woman of Beare."
Auraicept na nEces " The scholar’s primer ".
Bretha Nemed Toísech "The First Judgement of Nemed."
Cetnad nAise "A song for long life.". Adressed to the seven daughters of the sea.
Cuirt an Mhean Oiche "The Midnight Court." (Brian Merriman 18th century).
Coir Anmann " The fitness of names ."
Crith Gablach " The branched purchase? "(name of a versified summary of Irish law).
Faeth Fida "Lorica of St. Patrick.".
Sanas Cormaic "Cormac’s glossary."
Senchus Mor "The great old law book."
N.B. We cannot either without disadvantage ignore the Welsh mabinogi, the mabinogi of
Pwyll, prince of Dyfed, the mabinogi of Branwen daughter of Llyr, the mabinogi of
Manawyddan son of Llyr, the mabinogi of Math son of Mathonwy.
Let us well emphasize that they are there only some examples of manuscripts and accounts,
that there are in fact many others. Let us repeat it once again, the list given above is not
exhaustive, there are only some examples, the first which can come to mind.But whoever
read these texts understands immediately that remain in them as genuine elements only
some details, or cores, very archaic, or then some of the recurrent themes of all these stories.
The original accounts were dismembered, dislocated, unfortunately, and almost whole parts
of the initial account have disappeared, whereas were on the contrary inserted into their place
in the framework of these stories elements not having anything to do there, although
authentically Celtic-Druidic and pagan, or coming from other cultural horizons like the very
misogynists considerations put in the mouth of the druid Sencha according to Joanne Findon ,
on the occasion of the Ultonian women’s war of words. May our sisters of the Wicca have no
doubt on this subject.This despairing state of the Irish documentation for who wants to
reconstruct the initial pan-Celtic myth, has various causes.First one is that there has been an
evolution and for a long time therefore, in Ireland, of the mythological accounts brought into
the island by the various waves of Celtic invaders from Great Britain (or from the Continent).
And this before even its Christianization. The second reason is due to the very nature of every
oral literature: recitation of some pieces learned by heart (and therefore relatively stable) but
also invention or recombination or re-creation, of the accounts, by the bards become
storytellers; eager to be liked by their audience by developing if necessary. The third reason
is incontestably the censorship by the Christianity of considerable parts of all these accounts,
concretely by individuals, wandering storyteller bards or copyist monks, of Christian culture,
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not having taken over, or having removed, what ran up against their personal convictions. The
end result is that we lack so many things that the vestiges which remain to us, even put end
to end, are at times become absurd even incomprehensible, what they were not, of course, in
the least at the beginning. My personal assessment is that approximately 90% of the original
corpus (that the great druids of two thousand years ago had in their head) disappeared. It is
enough to see what remains us of martial techniques generally ascribed to our hero (the
young lord of Muirthemne, called Setanta = Hesus on the Continent) to realize that, and
therefore to consider regrettable that took place such an intellectual mess. The majority of the
feats or holds or arm locks (Gaelic cles) which are mentioned as being to put to his credit are
only names, often distorted or having many variants that we can glean here and there, without
we know exactly what they can (could) match. Works of our Canadian fellow-member William
Sayers did not succeed in clarifying much the subject, they especially succeeded in arousing
our curiosity.
Main characteristic traits we can find in these manuscripts.
The word, the verb, the logos, don’t owe their powers to their only incantatory strength but to
the fact that they are combined with the thought which is a strength equally great, or
sometimes greater, and in every case inseparable from the word, verb or logos. Saying, or
naming, it is from a metaphysical point of view, the same thing as to make come in the world
or to give life, to bring to existence.Hence besides the verbal technique of the labarum. This
druidic technique aims to channel the discursive mental process. Its virtues, combined with
the intention and the focusing of the reciter, are beneficial. It can be performed concretely
within the framework of a minimal rite, or of a more elaborate ritual.Christians besides did
something similar by insisting as much on their notion of logos or divine verb.
The famous Irish king Labraid loingsech for example looks to have had ears of a horse, like
King Mark of Cornwall. But traces exist on the Continent of such a belief since, in 1849, the
representation of a god endowed with an animal's right ear was found in Besançon, to
compare with the small bronze of the Amiens Museum representing the same character
sitting in the Buddha’s manner. This allegory of the word (and of listening, or of silence) was
therefore known by ancient druids hence paradoxically (but the paradoxical reasoning was
very known among the ancient druids) his qualifier as deaf-mute in certain texts: Moen, Maen,
Maon (Ollam). And it is then only that he will become “Labraid.” *
As many concepts we find outlined as soon as the Vedas, specified in Brahmana, Aranyaka
and Vedic or more recent Upanishad. For the Indian tradition, there is a direct
correspondence between the words, the objects, their meaning. Between the creating level of
the Pure Conscience and that of the creation, are situated the Verb, the Word (Para-Vach),
the Labaron in Celtic language).
However what particularly stands out from these texts it is the omnipotence of the Fate
implemented by curses called geis/gessa in Gaelic, or tynghed in Welsh according to John
Rhys in the second volume of his book about the Celtic folklore, Welsh and Manx. Concerning
the Welsh word “tynghed.”
I would cite a passage from the opening of one of the most Celtic of Welsh stories that of
Kulhwch and Olwen. Kulhwch's father, after being for some time a widower, marries again,
and conceals from his second wife the fact that he has a son. She finds it out and lets her
husband know it; so he sends for his son Kulhwch, and the following is the account of the
son's interview with his stepmother.His stepmother said unto him: "It were well for you to have
a wife, and I have a daughter who is sought of every man of renown in the world."
" I am not of an age to be wed," answered the youth. Then said she unto him : "I declare to
you that it is your destiny not to be suited with a wife until thou obtain Olwen, the daughter of
Yspaddaden Penkawr."And the youth blushed, and the love of the maiden diffused itself
through all his frame, although he had never seen her. And his father inquired of him : "What
has come over you, my son, and what ails you? "" My stepmother has declared to me that I
shall never have a wife until I obtain Olwen, the daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr."" That will
be easy for you," answered his father. "Arthur is your cousin. Go, therefore, unto Arthur to cut
your hair, and ask this of him as a boon.”...The word in the Welsh text for destiny is tynghet
(for an earlier tuncet), and the corresponding Irish word is attested as tocad. Both these
words have a tendency, like 'fate,' to be used mostly in pejorem partem. Formerly, however,
they might be freely used in an auspicious sense likewise, as for instance in the woman's
name Tunccetace, on an early inscribed stone in Pembrokeshire. If her name had been
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rendered into Latin, she would probably have been called Fortunata, as a namesake of good
fortune. ... In the southern part of my native county of Cardigan, the phrase in question has
been in use within the last thirty years, and the practice which it denotes is still so well known
as to be the subject of local stories....The phrase tyngu tynghed , intelligible still in Wales,
recalls another instance of the importance of the spoken word, to wit, the Latin fatum....I
would point out that the Romans had a plurality of fata; but ...it is not known that the ancient
Welsh had more than one tynghed. In the case, however, of old Norse literature, we come
across the Fate there as one bearing a name which is perhaps cognate with the Welsh
tynghed.I allude to a female figure, called Thokk, who appears in the touching myth of
Balder's death. ..In this ogress (Thokk) deaf to the appeals of the tenderest feelings, we seem
to have the counterpart of our Celtic tocad and tynghed; and the latter's name as a part of the
formula in the Welsh story, while giving us the key of the myth, shows how the early Aryan
knew nothing more binding than the magic force of an oath. On the one hand, this idea of
destiny carries with it the marks of its humble origin, and one readily agrees with Cicero's
words (De Divinatione II 7) when he says: “Anile sane et plenum superstitionis fati nomen
ipsum.” On the other hand, it rises to the grim dignity of a name for the dark, inexorable power
which the whole universe is conceived to obey, a power before which the great and
resplendent Zeus of the Aryan race is a mere puppet.”
Ar ro fedatar is vadh bodesin nobíad a athcinorAr rofetatár is úad fessin no bíad a athgein.
Curse besides is not absolutely the word of our language which suits best to convey this
situation because it is neither revenge nor punishment and the effects are not always
immediate. The main characteristic of these geis/gessa is indeed that they are generally
conditional, and that they are, moreover, besides, generally negative. It is requested from
somebody to make or more frequently not to make, such or such thing. The drama is woven
when the hero, caught between two contradictory gessa, is in the need for violating one of
these prohibitions to respect the other. We will come back on the subject.Solidarity between
the earthly world and the Other world. The Next World needs human beings and interferes
consequently constantly in our world to us. The conflicts affecting the hero are never
explained besides by his own person, but by some elements coming from this other world
(spells, curses, gessa, etc.). Existence of a warrior companionship (cf. the Fenians and the
Knights of the Round Table) and of communions or commensality (meal taken jointly) raising
delicate problems of precedence being able to ruin the authority of the king. Hence the use of
a round table as in the celicnon of the Continent (in the pertaining to worship room of the
corporation of blacksmiths in Alise for example). Obligation for the kings to be generous. The
existence of more or less magic objects, it is necessary to bring back from this other world.
The perilous seat (the lingam designated by the name stone of Fal, of Scone, stone of destiny
or sovereignty). The Grail (the olla or cauldron of the Suqellus Dagda Gurgunt). The spear of
Lug. The sword of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd, symbol of the justice every king must
make prevail, and so on.
* Irish legends present us Labraid as having come back from the Continent or from Great
Britain with reinforcements (2200 Laigin: thus called according to the broad steel spearheads
of their lances) in order to recover the throne of his grandfather Loegaire Lorc, and so to
found with these men the Leinster, around the sixth century before our era, becoming so the
second great people of Ireland (as far as some parts of Connaught) after the Erainn,The
historians think that in reality this legendary character matches a “historicized” divine
character (reverse euhemerism ). For more information on the extent of his power (most of
Europe to Italy) like about the exact origin of the Founding fathers of Leinster see the short
Irish saga entitled Orgain Denna Rig (the destruction of Dind Rig): they are associated there
with some Galioin (some Gauls) some Bolg (some Belgians) and some Domnain.
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ROLE OF THE CELTIC WOMAN IN THESE ACCOUNTS.
We don’t agree with Joanne Findon in her assessment of the dialog of the wooing of Aemer,
by Cuchulain. The remarks of Aemer are paradoxically very sexist and lock up the woman in
a role, of course, become traditional but which was perhaps not that of the Celtic woman a
few centuries earlier. There still undoubtedly under the influence of Christianity. We have as a
piece of evidence for that what Ammianus Marcellinus noted on this subject (Book XV.
Chapter XII. Paragraph 1).
A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single continental Celt if he
called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong when she is in a mad rage;
especially when, swelling her neck, gnashing her teeth, and brandishing her sallow arms of
enormous size, she begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many
missiles sent from the string of a catapult.”
Besides it will be necessary to await for Adamnan of Iona in 697 so that the women are
prohibited from military service (Synod of Birr. Cain Adamnain or Lex Innocentium. Article 52.
7 If women be employed in an assault or in a fight or host, seven cumals * [to be paid] .
Although being good intentioned , starting from a laudable sentiment caused by the shock of
the war horrors (type holocaust by bullets of the 1940s with the German einsatzgruppen in
Russia or atrocities of the war in Syria in the 2010s) this law of innocents, nevertheless had
serious negative effects, since its long-term consequence was to deprive women of the
capacity of inheriting a complete fiefdom (whereas, up to that point, they could well have a
fiefdom and direct it, according to the Ancient laws of Ireland. Volume 4. Of taking lawful
possession. Pages 40 and 41).
Din techtugad. “ Orba cruib ocus sliasta na mathar-sunn, ocus dibugad ro-dibaighi in mathir,
ocus ni fuilit mic acht ingeana nama; ocus beraidh in ingean in fearann uili co fuba ocus co
ruba, no a leth gan fuba gan ruba; ocus comde fuirre re aiseac uaithe iar sna ré .”
Din techtugad. "Inheritance of the mother's hand and thigh (that is, from the will) of this
mother, if the mother is dead, and there are no sons, only daughters. The daughters shall
obtain all the land with obligation to perform service of attack and defense, or the half of it
without obligation to perform service of attack and defense.”
The last part of this law (the possibility of escaping military service by contenting herself with
only half of the fiefdom) had to be added after the passing of the Cain Adomnain, and the
possibility of choosing remained probably purely theoretical in a first time: EVERYBODY
PREFERRING, OF COURSE, TO INHERIT THE WHOLE OF THE LAND AND NOT ITS
HALF.Let us pass over the kilos in excess that Ammianus Marcellinus ascribes a little
spitefully (racism?) to these “she-warriors” in the way of Scathache, the fact remains than
among true Celts (by the mind) excelling in fight or martial arts is not reserved for men. And I
doubt extremely our sisters of Wicca want really to contradict me on this subject.Below for
information (what a bad faith, you’d think read journalists dealing with the civil war in Libya or
Syria or Muslims speaking about the status of the woman during the Jahiliya, before their idol,
before Mohammedan isma, in short before Islam) how the abbot of Iona justifies prohibiting to
women the soldier’s trade. The least we can say it is that the text of St Adamnan contrasts
singularly with that of Ammianus Marcellinus. They are, however, supposed be speaking
about the same thing: the women in the fight alongside their husbands. Then who says
overall true, Ammianus Marcellinus (fourth century) or St Adomnan (seventh century). Let our
readers judge.
3. The work which the best women had to do was to go to battle and battlefields, encounter
and camping, fighting and attacking (Gaelic slugaid), wounding and slaying. On one side of
her, she would carry her bag of provisions, on the other her babe. Her wooden pole upon her
back. Three (?) feet long it was, and had on one end an iron hook, which she would thrust into
the tress of some woman in the opposite battalion. Her husband behind her, carrying a staff in
his hand, and flogging her on to battle. For at that time, it was the head of a woman, or her
two breasts, which were taken as trophies.”
Editor’s note. They were perhaps desperate cases of self-defense against potentially fatal
aggression (with in addition usual Christian exaggeration in this kind of circumstance, when it
is a question of thrashing out what is not themselves). For example, some driven out their
land peasant (on the initiative of the very Christian big landowners) and being likely to die of
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hunger (as during the evictions of little farmers or crofters which have occurred in the
highlands of Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries, and known under the name of Fuadach
nan Gàidheal (cf. on the subject the great poetess of Skye, Mairi Mhor nan Oran). But
between antagonists of the same social class (namely that of the poor paupers).
N.B. The fact that women or men driven to such a misery prefer to face death rather than to
remain without doing something is easy to be understood then very well. The fact that even
women fight with a strength born of desperation when it is a question of defending their
freedom like that of their children, their life and that of their children, we, in any case, we
understand it very well. And I hope that our sisters of Wicca too? understand it very well.
When it is a question of defending the village everyone must get busy , and it is besides what
also women do in such cases generally, in such circumstances they fight as well as men,
even with perhaps more energy (like tigresses) when they still have children in infancy. And
that is to be put to their credit.
* Namely 21 milch cows.
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TRUE OGHAMS, THE CELTIC RUNES
(FROM CELTIC RUNOS-RUNA, IRISH RUN,
WELSH RHIN: SECRET, MYSTERIES).
Reframing and specifications considering the misuses of many charlatans in this field.
The Celtic oldest known inscription in “runic” characters is that of Casteletto Ticino (xosioiso)
and dates back 575. But there is also the Celtic epitaph of Briona in Italy, written in Lepontic
language during the fourth century before our era.Inakuitesasocoikeni tanotaliknoi kuitos
lekatos anokopokios setupokios esanekoti anareuisseos tanotalos karnitus takos toutas.This
inscription in Celtic runes (written with letters derived from the Lugano alphabet, therefore
Etruscan) was followed by many others. Prohibitions or curses written in feda or in runic
letters were also engraved on yew tablets called later in Irish Fidlanna (from fid wood, and
lanna small planks). In North Italy this Celtic writing will enjoy perhaps besides a survival,
mentioned during the Middle Ages by the Latinized name of talamascae litterae. Well, at
least, perhaps…
Apart from the teaching field, mainly based on the memory and the by heart, the druids had
therefore very much written. Generally, inscriptions in funerary matter or warning statements:
as in the case of the inscriptions in oghamic characters later, much later (even of several
centuries, circa + 300 + 700) since they transcribe… some (primitive or archaic) Irish and not
some common Celtic nor some old Celtic, language.
NOTES ON THE SCRIPTS KNOWN OF THE FORMER DRUIDS.
The ancient Celts do not appear to have had since their origin an “indigenous” script common
to the whole of the Celtic-speaking peoples.The Celts discovered the writing under the
influence of Etruscans, in North-West Italy, where inscriptions in Celtic language use the
alphabet of Lugano. These “Lepontic inscriptions” come particularly from the culture of
Golasecca, Celtic or Celtized at the end of the seventh or sixth century before our
era.Lepontic was the language of the Lepontii, spoken in part of the Cisalpine from the
seventh to the third century before our era. The language is known to us only by some rare
inscriptions written in one of the five main varieties of old Italic alphabets, derived from the
Etruscan alphabet. These inscriptions were found in an area centered on Lugano precisely,
including the Lake Como and the Lake Maggiore.Similar scripts were used to note the Rhetic
language and the Venetic language. The runic alphabet of the Germanic languages is
probably derived from an alphabet of this group.Since the works of the great French linguist
Michel Lejeune (1971), a certain consensus has that the Lepontic is regarded as a Celtic
language, perhaps as differing as the Celtiberian, and in all cases distinct from the cisalpine
Celt.It is only recently that the tendency appeared to identify again the Lepontic to the
cisalpine Celtic. The Lepontic language was indeed equated with this language (by Latin
people); at the time of the settling of these people north of the Po River, and then, after the
Roman Republic took control of the Cisalpine, at the end or during the first century before our
era.In short, the first alphabets used by the Celts were therefore that which were used by the
Lepontic peoples of the civilization of Golasecca, and that which was used by the Cisalpine
Celts. Both derived from the alphabet of Etruscans.The main difference between the two was
the direction of some letters (from right to left for the Lepontic writing, from left to right for the
cisalpine Celt).Arrived into Great Britain, the Cisalpine Celtic script will evolve there to
produce the Welsh coelbreni later (if these coelbreni are not one of the innumerable hoaxes
due to Iolo Morganwg of course). While going up amber road, it will give rise also to the
Germanic runes themselves.
This assumption is confirmed by the existence of the exchanges linking North Italy and
particularly the Etruscans, to the Scandinavians and Germanics, links attested by the
discovery of helmets showing some words in Germanic language, but engraved in the
Etruscan alphabet (harikastiteiva : Negau B).The Germanic runes doubtless were phonetic,
then divinatory before becoming an alphabet under the influence of the peoples of the South
knowing writing like the Lepontic or Cisalpine Celts. The idea to use shapes as a writing
system as well as the choice of the characters linked to particular sounds; indicate in an
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unquestionable way that there was the influence of the people of the South (i.e., people of
North Italy).It is possible nevertheless that there was also influence of purely indigenous
(Germanic) ideograms and symbols. Fusion with some indigenous pictograms of the late
Bronze Age. These ideograms had to provide the final shape of the future runes; and their
order, as well as their number, doubtless result from a local magic symbolic system.
In short, the Germanic people therefore did not invent their runes ex nihilo, but began by
borrowing this way of writing from the Celtic druids of North Italy who themselves, etc.
Affected by the same insufficiency that the Etruscan script, it had only one character for b as
well as for p, for k and g (c and g “hard“). And the characters used to note i and u were also
used as semi-consonants, respectively for j and w; they were used thus at the same time as
vowels and consonants. Like besides in the Latin script used later by the Celts.
Lepontic people pertained to the very first Celtic wave arrived in Italy (a wave which,
moreover, succeeds in making adopt its language by the Ligurians, as Benvenuto Terracini
showed it well).
Cisalpine Celts pertained to later waves, from where their name of Galloi, given by the Celtic-
speaking people having preceded them in the country.
CISALPINE RUNES.
As we had had the opportunity to point it out, the word rune comes from the Celtic runo and
means secret or mystery. The comrunos is the one who studied the runes, the one who was
initiated in its secrets.Each letter of this alphabet is called feda.Luckily, it is very close to ours
from the point of view of the written form in block capitals, but its feda (its letters) does not
transcribe, on the other hand, the same sounds.
Correspondence between the characters in block capitals of the Latin alphabet and of the
cisalpine alphabet.
A = F (but strongly leaning towards the right). Name of the corresponding rune: ansuz.B see
P.C = K. Name of the corresponding rune: kaunan.D see T.E (strongly leaning towards the
right with an axis exceeding a little downward).F see U.G see C.H does not exist.I = I. Name
of the corresponding rune: isaz, cold, ice.J does not exist.K = K. Name of the corresponding
rune: kaunan.L = L (the stroke of bottom going up clearly towards the right). Name of the
corresponding rune: perpo.M = M (in fact more exactly a kind of w upside down). Name of the
corresponding rune: ehwaz, horse (Celtic mandus).N = N (slightly leaning towards the right
with the oblique stroke and the second vertical stroke shorter. A kind of zigzag all in all).
Name of the corresponding rune: haglaz. There also, a visible adaptation to engraving on
wood of this cisalpine letter usually cut in the stone.O = O. Name of the corresponding rune:
ingwaz. Among the Germanics the letter was obviously adapted to engraving on fidlanna or
coelbrenni (on wood tablets). The drawing of the cisalpine letter too, remained adapted to
engraving on stone.P. Let us say the first part or half of a N. Name of the corresponding rune:
laguz.Q see K.R = D (yes, at least in Cisalpine, in Lepontic this “D” is back to front).S = S
(more or less angular more in less in zigzags). Letter noting a soft sibilant. Name of the
corresponding rune: ihaz, iwaz.T = X. Name of the corresponding rune: gebo, gift.U = V.
Name of the corresponding rune: uruz, aurochs (Celtic Uros).V see U.W does not exist.X = Y
(with a small vertical bisector in the middle of the two upper branches). Name of the
corresponding rune: algiz.Y does not exist.Z see Z.Let us note lastly the existence of a letter
which one can coarsely describe as a kind of bow tie with a small vertical stroke in the middle.
Name of the corresponding rune: mannaz, man (Celtic mannos). It is a letter corresponding to
the barred D used in the texts written in the Latin alphabet, and noting a lisped sound specific
to the Celt, the affricate - ts. This affricate - ts quickly evolved to the double “s“: ss. In other
words, a strong sibilant.This butterfly-shaped letter representing the surd sibilant = S of the
Lepontic alphabet produced the rune dagr of the Germanic runic alphabet according to
Professor David Stifter. See the conclusion of his study entitled "Die Funktion von san im
Lepontischen". Why not ? Therefore are missing as names of equivalent runes only those
which were to correspond to the letters E and R of the Cisalpine alphabet. Those which exist
and which can be deduced are consequently Ansuz (A). Kaunan (C, G, K). Purisaz (P and B).
Isaz (I). Perpo (L). Ehwaz (M). Haglaz (N). Ingwaz (O). Laguz (P and B). Ihaz (S). Mannaz
(SS). Gebo (T and D). Uruz (U and V). Algiz (X).To these letters adapted to their culture, the
Germanic people have associated a certain number of ideas. The Algiz rune (y), the sacred
deer, symbolizes for example Hornunnos, the Great Stag, the Elk or Alce of Tacitus.The
question is: were these ideas suggested by the shape of the letters or their sound? As we
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could see with the case of the Cisalpine alphabet, the same letter can indeed note a
completely different sound. R and T of our alphabet being transcribed X and D in Cisalpine
alphabet, for example.Anna Marinetti showed that the legends of the Celtic coins of the
Narbonnese are not written in Greek characters, but in Lepontic characters. Just as those of
the Noricum which are not in Venetic characters (the Veneti were, however, their neighbors),
but also in Lepontic characters. In the Celtic inscriptions of Italy, they didn't use the Latin
alphabet, but the Lepontic alphabet, because it was this alphabet which had been so to speak
promoted to a national dimension; by a kind of inner movement prompting to refuse the
alphabets belonging to foreign civilizations. They do not use the Latin alphabet because it is
suitable for refusing the Romanity: it is there thus an ideological choice which leads these
Celtic people to keep their political and cultural identity spontaneously (Cf. Aldo Luigi
Prosdocimi. In The Celts. Bompiani 1991).
There was therefore only then the use was developed of a Western Greek alphabet, initially
written from right to left and still including the digamma and the qoppa or koppa, then from left
to right. With as main difference compared to the classical alphabet, the use of the letter C in
capital to note the sigma.
We can perhaps apply to the Cisalpine Celtic runes what the Irish tradition reports to us about
the ogham.- Question: which are the place, the time, the person, and the reason for this
invention?-Answer: ni ansa it is not difficult. The inventor is Ogmius, son of Elatha, son of
Delbaeth (in other words Taran/Toran/Tuireann), brother of Bregsos… A man expert in
language and poetry… The cause of his invention is that this language was to be the
reserved property of the scholars, with the exception of the peasants and of the shepherds.
Irish medieval tradition adds: The place is “Hibernia insula quam our Scoti habitamus“.
What is completely wrong as we could see, but at least what a beautiful story to tell the
children during the evening gathering by the fire.
Examples of inscriptions in Cisalpine Celt (transcription in our alphabet).
Let us remind here first of that of Briona in Italy, for giving its translation.
TANOTALIKNOI KUITOS LEKATOS ANOKOPOKIOS SETUPOKIOS ESANEKOTI
ANAREUISSEOSTANOTALOS KARNITUS.With more vertically on the left side the mention:
TAKOS TOUTAS.
The sons of Dannotalos, Quintus, Legate, Andocombogios Setubogios, and the sons of
Essandecotos Andareuiseos Dannotalos, this burial mound (had erected).Decision (tacos) of
the tribe (toutas).
Inscription of Vercelli (transcription in our alphabet).AKISIOS. ARKATOKOK… MATEREKOS.
TO… O KOT… ATOS TEUOX TONION EU.What meansAkisios Argantocox… Materekos
has given? Has given up? This plot of land to the gods and to the men, together (eu).
MASSALIOTE SCRIPT.
It is the script of the Greek type used by the Phocean settlers in Massalia (today Marseilles in
the south-east of France) and of its various colonies or trading posts. It was adopted in
Narbonnese with sometimes some characters of Cisalpine origin, especially in numismatics.
Caesar. B.G. Book I, chapter XXIX. “In the camp of the Helvetii, lists were found, drawn up in
Greek characters, and were brought to Caesar, in which an estimate had been drawn up,
name by name, of the number which had gone forth from their country of those who were able
to bear arms; and likewise the children, the old men, and the women, separately. Of all which
items the total was: of the Helvetii 263 000, of the Tulingi 36 000, of the Latobrigi 14 000, of
the Rauraci 23 000, of the Boii 32000.The sum of all amounted to 368,000. Out of these, such
as could bear arms amounted to about 92,000. When the count of those who returned home
was taken, as Caesar had commanded, the number was found to be 110 000.”
In other words, more than 70% of losses! What genocide!
The Celts could get the perfect mastery of this script through some contact with the Phocean
city of Marseilles, as soon as the seventh century before our era.This alphabet kept longer
than the classical Greek the F digamma, at the same time f, v but also w. The vowel U was
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sometimes noted Y, sometimes OY; but after the giving up of the digamma, the consonant U
was also transcribed OY. The old Q qoppa = Q, also ends up being given up there, as in
Greece, and replaced by the K kappa. The Celtic language not having z the Greek zeta
appears to be used like the letter transcribed as a “barred d” in Latin characters.The Greek
inscriptions (writing with the Greek alphabet of texts in Celtic language) are the most
important sources written by Celts, who reached us for the period previous to the Roman
conquest of the Narbonnese.N.B. Galatians too wrote with the Greek alphabet.
ROMAN SCRIPT.
Later still the adoption of the basic Latin alphabet happened. Without H, J, K, W, X, Y, Z; but
with supplementary letters, particularly the tau gallicum, a special letter (in fact a barred d, a
“d” resulting from the Greek theta) used in the texts written in the Latin alphabet to note the
lisped sound specific to the Celtic language, the affricate - ts. The Romans ascribed to it, one
wonders well why, some magic powers. There was also the O (theta = th or aspired t), as well
as - very rare the barred S, hissing.It was a script in which the X sound was noted by the
Greek khi and not by the x = ks Latin, so that this bi-consonant was therefore written XS
there.In this alphabet so adapted to Celtic by the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht),
the use of the characters F and Q was rather rare. Moreover, in numismatics, we find some II
as taking over of H Greek = ê, whereas in epigraphy this ii is well indeed a double i: vowel
then consonant.For transcription in our CURRENT alphabet, it is enough to use U instead of
V to note vowel or semi-consonant u= w. The Latin script confused U and V indeed a long
time: the capital being written V and the small one, u, and this, until the 18th century.It is only
tardily that the Latin script distinguished C (k). The first high knowers of the druidiaction
(druidecht) writing with the help of the Latin alphabet, therefore had only the character C to
note these two consonants.
An epigraphic example using “classical” capital letters: the inscription of Alise-Sainte-Reine in
Burgundy.Transcription.MARTIALIS. DANNOTALI IEVRV. VCVETE. SOSIN CELICNON
ETIC GOBEDBI. DUGIIONTIIO VCVETIN IN ALISIIA.Word by word translation…Martialis
[son] of Dannotalos has dedicated to Ucuetis this building and also the smiths who honor
Ucuetis in Alise.
More literary translation.I, Martialis, son of Dannotalos I have dedicated to Ucuetis this
building and with me the smiths who honor Ucuetis in Alise (“Alesia”).
Besides the epigraphic script, rather often carefully engraved in the inscriptions, Romano-
British people and Gallo-Roman people too used, often, a cursive script (we would say today,
“handwritten“) of Latin origin, while adding to it the supplementary letters useful for the
transcription of the Celtic language.No carefully written examples, but especially curse
inscriptions and graffiti, due to ceramists. We can notice that E and II were confused in one
letter and that letters H and Y were not used to transcribe Celtic language. As for F too, it was
used only to note foreign proper nouns, Latin or Germanic.
An example of cursive script: the inscription of Chamalieres.Transcription.andedion uediiumi
diiiuion risunartiu mapon arueriiatin lopites snieddic sos brixtia anderon c lucion floron
nigrinon adgarion aemili- one paterin claudion legiturnon caelion pelign claudio pelign marcion
uictorin asiati-con addedilli etic secoui toncnaman toncsiiontio meion toncsesit bue tid ollon
reguccambion exsops pissiiumitsoccanti rissuis onson bissiet luge dessummiiis luge
dessumiis luge dessumiis luxe.What undoubtedly means something as what follows.I call
upon (uediiumi) by the strength (ri-sunartiu) of the chthonian god-or-demons (diiiuion
andedion), Mabon/Maponos/Oengus, etc. Etc.
An inscription, of course, due to a descendant of a druid of gutuater type (lapsed into the rank
of a caragius, cf. St Eligius), since the word uediiu is to be brought closer to the name of the
talk in old Celtic: gutu (gedit > Irish guidid, he prays). As for mi, ending of the first person of
the deponent present indicative that matches the agglutination of the pronoun “me“. Uediiu-mi
= pray-me = I pray.
In addition to these alphabets, there were also the scripts known as Iberian, semi-syllabic,
semi-alphabetical, practiced in the far south and the Iberian peninsula, by Iberians
themselves and by Celtiberians, but also by pure Celts. See on the subject the inscriptions of
Botorrita, Luzaga and Enserune.
N.B. The thing is to be emphasized. As the discovery by the legionaries of the divine Jules, in
the camp of these unfortunate Helvetians, of written in Greek characters files, proves it well ;
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for the ancient druids, there was no objection in principle to use this human (or divine
according to the Irishmen) invention which is the writing; but on condition it is for a secular
use because Holy Scriptures cannot exist by definition. Writing is always non-religious since
the sacredness it is the Spirit which blows where it wants and not the letter! Hence
importance of the memorizing for the ancient druids.Bible and Quran are therefore only
clusters of words (often incoherent besides: what comes to do in the Bible an almost atheistic
book like the Ecclesiastes? What are coming to make in Quran the isolated letters which
appear at the head of 27 suras, like the letters alif lam and mim at the head of the sura No. 2
for example, even still worse, the expressions in which obviously it is not God who speaks
but a human being who speaks to Him, like calling upon Him?) some words written down on
rag paper or on a scrap of paper, and containing the best rarely. Taken literally Bible and
Quran are intolerable because as regards spirituality, the freezing of the thought by writing
was always the worst of the things which can happen for it (it can no longer evolve if it is not
with the largest difficulties, it is fixed). Taken in symbolic or allegorical sense I can make the
recipe book of my grandmother (you know the goose-herd women of Pont-Varin who was a
few years cooker in the manor) say as much). Let us say the Mahabharata or Buddha.The
most normal attitude in connection with them is therefore to respect Bible and Quran…
exactly insofar as themselves they respect all those who do not think like them, the atheistic
materialists, the spiritualistic atheists, the agnostics, the pantheists, the polytheists, in short
the non-believers of all kinds of whom we flatter ourselves to be a member as a kafir. The
positive or negative reciprocity as regards human relations is the beginning of wisdom.
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THE DIVINATION THROUGH LETTERS:
PRENNI LOUDIN or PRENNI LAG.
(“The casting wood” in the calendar of Coligny. Breton prenn denn and Irish crann chur).
We don't know what was very precisely the Irish crann-chur. The assumption most usually
put forward perhaps, is that it was the drawing a little piece of white, black, or red, wood,
hidden in a box with two others. If a man drew the white stick, he was innocent; the black one,
he was guilty; the red one it was necessary to do again. In short exactly the same system as
that practiced with white, black, or red, stone. But once again, let us repeat , it is there only an
assumption extrapolated from the texts speaking us about the Irish ordeals.
Let us finish this short examination of the known script of the high knowers of the druidiaction
(druidecht) with the last medieval improvement of the Celtic script come (perhaps) from
Cisalpine, and (perhaps) distant heir to the Lepontic or Cisalpine characters: the
coelbrenni.The name of coelbrenni comes from COILU = omen and PRENNIOS = wood, tree,
because it was especially at the beginning some characters engraved on small strips of soft
wood or on the sides of rods being used for the divining. The drawing lots based on the
coelbrenni was undoubtedly to be practiced a little in the same way as with the Cisalpine or
Lepontic runes of North Italy. At least such is our assumption to us. At least it has the virtue of
being less simplistic and of bringing into play more than three possibilities. In fact, an infinity
of possible readings of what the fate keeps for us.The letters of the alphabet in question were
engraved on soft pieces of wood or on barks, and cast on a white woolen fabric in order to
interpret what that could produce.The apocryphal Barddas of William Ab Ithel made the
Coelbren y beirdd (wood signs or bardic alphabet ) a support of divination or of preaching
among Welshmen.The variants of these Coelbren y Beirdd (or Cwttws) were very limited
(some various coding).
Forgery betraying the original spirit or re-creation based on elements genuinely Celtic and
taking the original spirit up again (because no-paganism should be a superstition more,
following the example of Judaism Christianity or Islam, which are true crimes against the
spirit, which are so many intellectual relapses or regressions!)
The big problem of these Coelbreni, it’s they are still probably one of the hoaxes forged by
Iolo Morganwg. The Coelbren y Beirdd is indeed probably an alphabet invented about 1791
by Iolo Morganwg who claimed then it was the alphabet of the ancient high knowers of the
druidiaction (druidecht). This counterfeit of druidic alphabet had 20 various letters and 20
other signs to note the vowels or other characteristics of the Welsh language. They were
engraved on parallelepiped wood rods and these four sided rods were fixed within a
framework in order to be able to turn, what therefore made the reading of letters reproduced
on the four sides, possible. The name of this strange wooden apparatus was peithynen. The
son of Iolo Morganwg, Taliesin ab Iolo, published this counterfeit in 1840. And the
aforementioned alphabet became very quickly popular among certain Welsh poets or neo-
druids of the time, although Edward Davies known as Celtic Davies (1756-1831) has
questioned its authenticity. In 1893, J. ROMILLY Allen, assistant redactor of the review
Archaeologia Cambrensis, wrote besides to the secretary of Welsh Gorsedd to state to him
that he thought this alleged bardic alphabet was, in fact, an outright imposture. And had
nothing genuinely druidic. Griffith John Williams has well repeated in 1948 (Traddodiad
Llenyddol Morgannwg) that the ritual of Welsh Gorsedd and therefore of all the groups having
resulted from it, in France or elsewhere in the world, were invented, invented without even
taking into account their original spirit.
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THE OGHAMIC HERESY IN IRELAND.
As we could see, the oldest Celtic script known it is the Lepontic runes (the Lepontic language
was a Celtic dialect spoken in North Italy and therefore having used for that an adaptation of
the Etruscan alphabet).The Irishmen of the Middle Ages, on the other hand, have invented a
writing system neither pan-Celtic nor ancient, that they have in a completely abusive way,
also associated with the god-or-demon Ogmius (Ogma); by means of various legends, where
they have a little mixed everything, as in the Milesian legends relating to the settling of Gaels
in the country (biblical topic of the Tower of Babel, Greek scholarship with the localization in
Scythia, etc.).We will therefore speak about it here only for the record, and we advise by no
means an intensive use of this system, except for pure fantasy or poetic purposes (like the
previous one besides). And this in accordance with the first words of this treatise, i.e., its very
title: “Incipit Auraicept na nEces .i. eraicept, ar er gach toiseach.” Incipit (here begins) the
primer of poets, that is, eraicept, beginning of lessons, etc.This writing system, which does
not date back beyond the first or second century of our era, and more probably the fourth or
fifth one, is a transposition of the Latin alphabet. It consists of a series of horizontal or slanting
strokes, more precisely some notches, engraved on the edge of a standing stone, or on a
wood pillar. The inscriptions are always funeral dedications or praises. With some exceptions
like the famous spindle whorl of Buckquoy (Orkneys) of which the inscription, however, looks
certainly less pagan than the “moni gnatha gabi buddutton mon” of the spindle whorl found in
Nevers (France) in 1845, which means something as “come my girl and give a kiss,
come”).We find specimens of this oghamic script (400 inscriptions) only in Ireland and in the
West of Great Britain: Wales, Scotland. Because the Picts, influenced by Goidels, have also
had recourse to an oghamic alphabet, though perceptibly different. There is no example on
the continent.As we will have the opportunity to see below, the manuscript of the book of
Ballymote, the auraicept, contains very many variants of this alphabet. The two other
documents on this subject are the “De Duilib Feda Na Forfid” (values of the forfeda) as well
as the “Lebor Ogaim” or Ogam tract. It is up to each now to compare these variants to have a
more exact idea of this medieval writing system.Some of them are extremely strange and are
not without making us think of metaphysical or cosmogonic ideas. We find in it in particular
some letters laid out in five concentric circles (Finn’s window), but also on four squares
encasing themselves one in another, the central square being barred in cross (diagonals? A
quadruple enclosure?? The standard plan of a shrine??).We will not say something more on
this writing system, since it is neither pan Celtic nor old, and in a few words very suspect. The
oghamic script would have been invented with the Gaelic language after the fall of the tower
of Babel… This detail only is enough to show the little seriousness of such a system, invented
by a Scythian prince called Fenius Farsaid. The Auraicept claims besides that it is also this
Fenius Farsaid who would have invented the oldest alphabets, Hebrew, Greek and Latin (no
less); but it is the oghamic alphabet called by him Beithe-luis-nuin, which would have been
the most accomplished one, since worked out the last. The names that Fenius Farsaid would
have given to these runes would have been the names of his 25 better disciples.Strangely
enough, another section of the Auraicept Na n-Éces credits the god-or-demon Ogmius with
the same invention. He would have developed this alphabet for the elite, and only for this
elite, so that they can speak between them without being understood by the ignoramuses.
What are the place, time, person and cause of the invention of the oghamic runes? It is not
hard. It is in the time of Bres, son of Elatha, that they were invented. Their inventor was a man
very skilled in speech and in poetry, Ogma [Ogmius], son of Elatha, son of Delbaeth
[Tara/Toran/Tuireann], brother to Bres; for Bres, Ogma [Ogmius] etc. were the three sons of
Elatha son of Delbaeth [in other words Taran/Toran/Tuireann] there… The cause of their
invention is that this speech should belong to the learned apart from the rustics and simple
herdsmen.Other questions about it.Who are the father and the mother of oghamic
runes?What is the first name that was written with oghamic runes? In what letters it was
written? By whom it was written?Hic voluuntur omnia…Ogam comes from Ogma [Ogmius],
suo inventore primo, but ogum is also og-uaim, a perfect alliteration the veledae (filid) used
for poetry. The father of the oghamic rune is Ogma [Ogmius], and the mother is the hand or
the dagger he used for that etc.etc”.
The first text written in oghamic runes would have been; according to the medieval tract; a
succession of 7 “b“ engraved on birch bark, meaning “your wife will be abducted seven times
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into the other world, unless this birch prevents that “ and intended for Lug. The reason why
the “b” corresponding to the tree called “birch” would be today the first letter of the
aforementioned alphabet. This part of the tract explains to us then why the names
corresponding to the letters in question were tree names, and not these of Fenius’ disciples,
etc., etc.Help!!
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CONCLUSION ON THE (ANCIENT) DRUIDISM.
Lucan (Pharsalia, book I, line of verse 452). “And you... druids...to you alone it is given the
gods and celestial powers to know or not to know.”
Sociopolitical aspect.
The high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), ancient, whose sodality (under the name
dikastes in Asia Minor) incorporated the Celtic-speaking intelligentsia, had a mission of
maintenance and education of the Celtic society, and they carried out its mental coherence in
the absence of political unity. It was up to them therefore, for this reason, to supervise the
religion of their peoples.
Religious opinions meet two nearly independent needs.For a minority, sufficiently armed
intellectually to risk itself there, it is a “search for the Grail “i.e., a personal reflection: the
research of the truth through free examination and meditation.For the largest number, it is
only the adherence to a community where they are in communion of feelings, and where
certainty, some directives of behavior, as well as a certain serenity as for the afterlife,are
found; therefore the case of the large majority of the ancient Celts.
Happy the peoples beneath the Great Bear thanks to their error; because they do not know
this supreme fear which frightens all others: hence the spirit [Latin mens] inclined to throw
itself on iron, the strength of character [Latin anima] able to face death”( Lucan. Pharsalia.
Book I).
These “worships“ and this profusion of beliefs can be legitimately described as a “druidic
religion“ since the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) improved its intellectual level
with their doctrine of the long life of individuals or of the universe and with a demanding
ethic.Without giving up their relativist monist philosophy, the ancient high knowers of the
druidiaction, invited their fellow countrymen, “to honor the gods“ ; because a number of them
regarded the different deities of the panth-eon as the respectable expressions of an honest
perception, of phenomena being able to be envisaged as some “hypostases“ (vyuha in
Hinduism) of Fate. In short, the former druidism was to Celtic paganism what Brahmanism is
in Hinduism: a difference in the points of view within a common framework.
With, of course, some variants, the former druidic thought can therefore be summarized by
the triptych below.At the same time immanent and transcendent cosmic deity (a kind of
cosmic cauldron), the FateEmanations and hypostases (vyuha in Hinduism. What the
Muslims condemn while calling that shirk).For the common people a Panth-eon or pleroma
and a mythology (respectable folklore containing a symbolism having some value).
Philosophical aspect.
Strabo, book IV, chapter IV, 4. “Moreover, not only the druids, but others as well, say that
soul, and also the universe, are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time
or other prevail over them.”
In spite of appearances (the quotation of Strabo on this subject is to be correctly interpreted),
our distant (spiritual) ancestors had known to avoid the double obstacle (of the Charybdis and
Scylla of the deep blue sea) that are the absolute monism and the absolute dualism. There
were among them only relative monism or some dualisms always as relative. Better even,
many clues show that it does not exist indeed, in Celtic paganism, an absolute cut between a
supposedly or alleged creator (a demiurge), and some creatures subjected to its goodwill.
The world, whether it is divine or human besides, is ONE and there are only different states
from the same being (water remains water, even if it is frozen, therefore in the shape of ice, or
changed into steam).The differences between pantheism and panentheism can be graphically
schematized as follows.Two circles of almost the same diameter and concentric:
pantheism.Two circles of very different diameter and not concentric, the smallest
encompassed in the lower part of the greater: panentheism.By contrast, creationism of the
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Judeo-Islamic-Christian demiurge could be represented as two circles of very different
diameters aligned vertically, starting with the greatest (God is always the greatest). Well
separated. Or tangent. Or overlapping more or less. Like in the set theory by George Cantor.
Panentheism is essentially a combination of theism (God is the Supreme Being) and
pantheism (God is everything). While pantheism maintains that God and the universe are
coextensive, panentheism affirms that God is greater than the universe and that the universe
is contained within God. According to Panentheism God is everything in the universe, but God
is nevertheless greater than it (than the universe).Pantheism, on the other hand, affirms that
God is not the cause but the “supreme effect” of the universe. Events and changes in the
universe effect and change God. As the universe grows and learns, God also increases in
knowledge and in size. The word pantheism appears for the first time in 1720 in the
Pantheisticon of the neo-druid John Toland.
In ontology of druidic type or at least of Celtic spirit, 3+ 3+3 = 10. Specialists call drug synergy
not simply additive but potentiating the drug interaction of which the therapeutic effect is
higher than that of each drug taken in an isolated way. Well, in the same way druidic
pantheism was not an ordinary pantheism, it was the pantheism of the type “the whole make
more than the sum of the parts and has specific properties,” what, of course, without equaling
it to the latter*, brought it much closer to panentheism which was besides a doctrine also
professed by some ancient Schools of high knowers of the druidiaction, since also compatible
with the religious sensitivity of all those who were spiritually Celtic (like the Celtiberians in
Spain the Teutons in Germania even the Getae or Daci in Thrace).
The religious philosophies maintaining that there exists a divine reality which presides over
the destiny of the world, considering consequently that nature and human status are a
manifestation of God, therefore come close to the panentheism: “Everything is in God.” God is
regarded as the divine actor who plays simultaneously the innumerable parts of men,
animals, plants, stars and natural forces. The most typical presentations of this without
cosmos pantheism or panentheism come from the Hindu tradition, whose principal
philosophical representative was the Indian thinker Shankara.
Conversely, the advocates of the cosmic pantheism refer to the totality of the finite and
changing entities, totality to which they give the name of God. God is simply all the things in
the universe. Everything that exists is in God and vice versa.Pantheism is therefore
naturalism of the divinity of Nature. Naturalism can be defined literally as an atheistic doctrine
which doesn't admit other principles only the laws or forces of Nature. Pantheism is so
identified, as regards that, with deist naturalism, deterministic in that it is related to the
concept of necessity.
It is distinguished particularly on two points from the various mass monolatries known as
Judaism Christianity or Islam.
Everything which is, exists not only by God, but in God.God is not a personal being distinct
from the world, but is immanent to it (and that in opposition therefore, according to traditional
metaphysics, to the notion of creating and transcendent God).
This monist design of the world therefore means that an absolute or completely hermetic
border between mineral vegetable animal and human, even divinity, does not exist there. It
involves consequently the refusal of dualisms of any nature, the refusal of antinomies
resulting from more or less arbitrary simplifications. We should not confuse nevertheless the
relativistic monism of the high knowers of the ancient druidiaction with the absolute monism of
Indian philosophers like Shankara or certain Buddhists. If the high knowers of the primordial
druidiaction very early admitted the unity of substance or essence of everything that can exist,
perhaps even in an unmemorable way because the Neanderthal man was, of course, not less
intelligent than us, on the other hand, they always admitted the largest plurality as regards the
accidents affecting the surface of the aforementioned substance or essence of things and
beings. They never refused the global reality of the changing finite neither disputed the reality
of the haphazardness or of the autonomy (relative liberty) of the individuals; nor considered
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as purely illusory or phantasmal the personality of individuals.We should not be mistaken for
the interpretation of the famous quotation of Strabo; the first of these absolute dichotomies so
rejected is the opposition between “Soul” and “Matter.” Just as ice is only a state of being, a
state of being different of water (frozen or not, ice remains essentially some water), the matter
is only a different state of the universal soul.
In this respect, druidism appears to us singularly more compatible than Judaism Christianity
or Islam with the modern thought, which considers these antagonisms as being outstripped.
Cosmological aspect.
Design of a cyclic universe or bitos, resulting from a cosmic egg or snake egg, a universe
which, at the end of a certain duration (a long life) will have an end then, perhaps, a new
beginning, in other words: involution, explosion/hatching, expansion, cataclysmic resorption
and concentration of energies. It is besides what also proposed the Christian Celtic and
druidicist of the ninth century Scottus Eriugena, the Belgian Canon George Lemaître with his
big bang, and what the French Teilhard de Chardin has designated as being the “Omega
Point,” though to a lesser extent. Both more or less regarded as heretics by the Roman
Catholic Church , which, however, affirms that its God is the “alpha or omega” of all things.
Concepts of parallel and interpenetrating universes, with different space-time parameters.
There too, it is an idea, put forward, within the Relativity theory, by current thinkers…
It is not useless in this respect, to remind that the Celtic sidh of Ireland match narrowly to the
Buddha kshetras known at the other end of the Aryan world.
Buddha kshetra, land of Buddha or field of Buddha, is indeed a Buddhist word which
designates a realm of the universe in which a given Buddha exerts his activity or his influence
a little like Hornunnos among us...
Below some pure land names.The land of the secret Solemnity of the Vairocana Buddha,
described in the Mitsugon kyo.The pure land of the vulture peak, where the teaching of the
Shakyamuni Buddha prevail.The pure land located on the Potakala Mount of the bodhisattva
Avalokiteshvara.Then why not the pure land (Celtic hereafter) of the Buddha Belinos
Barinthus Lerognatos (Manannan among the Gaels)?So considered, the Universe is a living
whole, formed of living elements. And the planet Earth following the example of the other
elements in the Cosmos (of which intergalactic immensity was, of course, not suspected
during the time of the ancient high knowers of the druidiaction) is regarded as a living entity,
resulting from the cosmic matter of the primordial snake egg.**
Theological aspect. In this living and organized universe, the bitos, an upper “Being” or more
precisely “Who is” (Latin ens), the Cosmic soul, so incommensurably higher than human
intelligence that it is straightforwardly DIVINITY, manifests.In the druidic design of the time, it
is this cosmic soul which is the source of the souls of men. And the latter, possibly after one
or more embodiments and/or some “stays” in several “worlds“ will be reabsorbed in the
Divinity, at the latest at the time of an “end of the world “ still to come (general erdathe).This
relativist monist or relativist dualist design, of the Universe, or Bitos, brings to regard this
cosmic soul as being at the same time transcendent and immanent: everywhere present and
in no way anthropomorphic. Therefore no proper noun which would be the application, as for
it, of a word resulting from human language. It is a form of pantheism or of panentheism
(according to the Schools) but, of course, not of monotheism ***.
* The reflection of the high knowers of the druidiaction has always evolved between
pantheism agnosticism and atheistic materialism (the three points of the magic triangle inside
it turns like a triskelion) and we cannot therefore really put a sign “equal” between the
pantheism of the druidic type and the panentheism of the deist type.
** See the assumption which integrates, for our planet, the concept of biomass, controlled as
by a mysterious intelligence. An assumption that the English James Lovelock could have
named Litavis, or Nerthus, of the name of our good old Earth among the Celts, but he
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preferred, we wonder well why, to call Gaia, in 1970 (Gaia is the interpretatio graeca of
Nerthus. Or Litavis).
***Insofar as we understand by this term the belief in an isolated personal deity, endowed with
a proper noun, and considered as single, exclusive of every other; whether it is in the tribal or
ethnic level, even on a cosmic scale.
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APPENDIX No 1.
HOW TO CAST CISALPINE RUNES?
The Indo-European root of the word “rune,” run, means “mystery” or “secret.” The first
peoples having practiced this clairvoyance mode were, of course, some Celtic peoples in
North Italy. The Cisalpine or Lepontic runes were to be, in the beginning, mainly some vertical
and diagonal marks with very few curves or horizontal strokes, in order to be easier to
engrave on wood by following its grain, but they also had to be used to write on stone metal
even leather.
The method of divination with the runes is rather simple in its principle (a cleromancy) and
has nothing to do with the usually put forward assumptions in connection with the Irish crann
chur, but, of course, it also raises the whole problem of the possibility (or not) of predicting the
future (on this point see our later lessons).
Man cut out small wood planks (coiluprenni, coelbren in Welsh today) which then are
engraved with letters of the Cisalpine alphabet. These coiluprenni or coelbrenni were then
scattered randomly on a white cloth similar to the one which was to be used for the gathering
of mistletoe. The person who was come to consult chose then always randomly three of them,
and these three coiluprenni gave the answer.
The book of the Irish ogham (Lebor ogaim) has perhaps collected remains or snippets of this
disappeared science according to R.A.S. Macalister and his essay entitled “the secret
languages of Ireland” published in 1937.Let us note first that this ogam tract mentions
straightforwardly several types of alphabet.Of which some varieties used to encrypt certain
messages. Example the Runogam na Fianna or secret alphabet of the Fenian warriors.
Other varieties of alphabets.
The nose ogham (sronogam).The palm of hand ogham (basogam).The foot ogham
(cossogam).
Here, for example, the short text of the boy ogham (macogam) used in the medieval Irish
tradition in order to determine the gender of the child to be born.
The name of the pregnant woman is divided by two unless she has borne a child previously.
If, however, she has borne a child previously, it is the child's name, which is divided by two;
and if there is a letter over, it will be a boy. If it is an even number, it will be a girl who will be
born from this pregnancy." What seems to mean that a name with an odd number of letters
foretells a boy, an even number a girl.
The oghams are also gathered in categories of which here are the names.
The bird ogham (enogam).The color ogham (dathogam).The agricultural ogham (ogam
tirda).The water ogham (ogam uisceach).The dog ogham (conogam).The cow ogam (bo-
ogam).The ox ogam (dam-ogam).The art ogham (danogam).Etc.,etc.
Let us note lastly it exists there quite a mysterious Finn’s window (fege Finn in Gaelic). A
window overlooking the other world??? A dwelling?
N.B.The big problem of ogham is that, if they are quite Irish, in spite of their very great poetic
force, they have nothing ancient, and are, in fact, an adaptation of the Latin alphabet dating
back to the fifth century of our era.
N.B. It is rather not very probable that the Germanic people could invent such an alphabet
from nothing a few thousand years after the appearance of the first ones. They were therefore
to borrow this script system from the north-alpine Italic alphabets and have adapted it to their
language (Seebold, Krause, Jensen and Coulmas, think that these Germanic peoples would
have been Herules; we are not able to confirm nor to invalidate such an assumption); in order
to transcribe their own language, what therefore produced the properly Germanic alphabet
that is the futhark (or futhorc, to know more on this subject see our brothers in Northern or
Germanic paganism).
As in the case of our modern tarot, of which certain cards are, incidentally, quite strange (the
hanged man, the wheel of fortune, etc.) everything depends on the comment art of the
clairvoyant. And of his personal level of honesty. A little like in the political-media world
besides.
We warn nevertheless our readers against the charlatans and the impostors who proliferate in
this field. The majority of the clairvoyants or pseudo-clairvoyants use statements which can
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be interpreted in several ways, or cannot be contradicted. The majority uses formulations as
“you can” or “it is possible that“ etc.
All that comes close to the Barnum effect more to authentic clairvoyance. The attitude of the
majority of them besides goes clearly against the scientific spirit, and they never question
their theories. No scientific discipline can predict and does not claim to predict with precision
the future. By claiming to have knowledge of the future, these clairvoyants pretend to be
favored people endowed with a mystical gift, what tallies in no way with true sciences which
base their theories on naturally explainable facts. Besides, these supposed “experts” in the
subject does not agree themselves to each other about the future in question.In conclusion.
All that raises the problem of the possibility of knowing the future. Nothing is less sure. What
is concerned in these prenni lag, prenni loudin, crann chur or casting Cisalpine runes, is
perhaps only a characterology coupled with an intuitive extrapolation or not (in this case it’s a
prognosis ) of the course of the events, being based on a certain number of data considered
as meaning (some signs).
Basically, a character can be analyzed according to three axes.The emotiveness.The activity.
The activity is the fact of acting deliberately, voluntarily, for a goal, and not under the effect of
an emotion. The active one is an extrovert who acts on the world: he builds, establishes some
relations, and acts voluntarily, towards goals which he has set for oneself. The obstacle
stimulates him. The inactive one is an introvert who reflects on the world: he acts only by
need. Obstacle easily makes him give up.The level of restraint or not of the reactions
(primariness/secondariness). A primary one will get angry quickly, but will forget the past
almost as quickly; a secondary one cannot react at the time, but take one’s revenge with
determination many years later.
N.B. Jung’s typology is different. It is based on an observation of the direction of the energy of
individuals: towards the others for the extraverts, towards the ideas or his body, for the
introverts.
La Rochelle 11 13 2007.
! --- ------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------!
Toulon 06 15 2006.
Note for the Celtic priestesses or veledae.
How to draw runes today (and this, from a neo-druidic point of view, because it is in any way
a question of coming back to ancient druidism which is definitively dead, and outstripped).
There is no reason for raising from the dead the ancient druidism by cloning it, but for
enriching the world today with its best principles.
To draw the Cisalpine Celtic runes, it is necessary to have a bag out of leather or a crane bag
(like the bag of the Irish Fenians for example), in which the 15 letters of the Cisalpine
alphabet are arranged; a piece of cloth, preferably white, which will be used as a stand as for
the mistletoe gathering; and a flat surface.It is on the piece of cloth that one will lay out the
runes drawn from the bag or emptied from the bag by the consulting one since this way of
divination is based on the cleromancy, from Greek klêromanteia, mantikê -mancy and klêron
lot. i.e., it uses as an indicator of some movements caused randomly by the human being,
haphazardness being regarded as the immediate expression of the divine will.Tacitus says
that each engraved piece of wood is observed three times. What can mean that the
priestesses or the veledae did again three times their analysis of the runes laid out in front of
them after being drawn by the consulting one. In order not to be mistaken in their
interpretation undoubtedly and to take into account the whole of the message of the gods (or
demons, of course, the Christians will say later, forgetting a little quickly that the Bible too
mentions well some urim and thummim).
METHODS AND FIGURES.
There exist two great methods in order to draw the runes.Either the consulting person gets
them one by one out of their bag before putting them on the white cloth at the place indicated
with his finger by the clairvoyant in order to form the selected figure.Or he empties the
contents of the bag in front of him after having well mixed the runes inside.N.B. In practice
this method functions really only with a sufficiently reduced number of runes. Three or six, for
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example. If one uses in the same way, the 16 runes, one can then find oneself with a kind of
Celtic pick-up sticks really difficult to interpret.The drawing diagram or symbol which can be
formed with these runes randomly drawn is called figures. If the consulting person chose the
first method of drawing lots.If the consulting person preferred the second method, the
clairvoyant in this case will have to manage with that. Fortunately, our ancestors, in their deep
wisdom, always granted themselves the possibility of doing again the drawing on the following
day apparently. At least it is what we can deduce from Tacitus’s text.N.B. As we will see
below, one of the figures currently used by the clairvoyants and subjected to the preliminary
choice of the consulting person, is known as “Celtic cross.” Like every cross, Celtic or not, it is
therefore eminently dubious. Perhaps it is it better to reinterpret it as a sun “votive wheel” we
will be allowed consequently to still call Celtic if it is necessary, without a problem, since there
are precisely 4 of them engraved on the stone of Briona in Italy.
1. How to proceed?Interpretation can be done with 3 runes, of course, but also with 4, 5, 6, 7,
8...15, or 16, runes.There is no particular ritual. It is, however, necessary to try to create an
atmosphere, an ambiance which is favorable to meditation or focusing. Formerly, the
consulting person was to respect a certain chronology with obligatory stages. He had, while
mixing the runes contained in the small bag, to begin by speaking to the god-or-demons with
an improvised prayer of his choice. Then…- To spread the piece of cloth over a table, if
possible out of wood. If we are in the middle of nature, you can even lay out a white cloth
directly on the ground, as for the gathering of mistletoe.- To place the 16 runes in the bag of
feathers or leather of crane, after having counted them.- The person who came to consult, in
the most complete silence, must focus, forget about everything in oneself and think of the
question he wishes to ask. This question must be simple, avoid the negative formulations,
and concern only one subject. For example, “Do I have to make such a decision? “- After
having mixed the runes, the drawing can begin, according to the chosen figure, possibly
blindly or while looking at elsewhere, while looking up towards the sky, for example.- The
Celtic priestess or the velede indicates to the consulting person then where to place the
randomly drawn runes in order to form or draw the figure chosen by him. He must do it
without seeking to change their direction.
The position of the runes.According to their drawing, the runes are therefore laid out in this
way on the square of fabric. Their position has quite a precise meaning. Various cases can
occur.
- The rune can be put with engraved side visible and right side up.- The rune can be put with
engraved side visible and upside down.- The rune can be put with engraved side hidden but
right side up.- The rune can be put with engraved side hidden but upside down.
N. B. Right side up and upside down must be appreciated from the point of view of the
consulting person. It is for him that the message of the gods is intended, not for the
clairvoyant who in fact is only an interpreter.
Certain runes are known as absolute. Whatever their position is, they will always have the
same meaning. It is the case of the WYND rune, or white rune, equivalent to the red pebble of
Irish ordeals (two others being black or white).
For the others, we can say that with their right side up, they will have a rather positive value
BUT that upside down and with their side hidden, they will have a rather negative value.
3. Various types of figures.- Consultation of the fairies of matres type or of the bethen (the
three virgins): with three runes.It is the simplest figure and which makes it possible to get
answers of the kind, “yes“ or “no“ to the asked questions.It is enough to have three runes on
our piece of white fabric used for mistletoe gathering.
The direction of reading of the horizontal lines is from left to right and if it is needed possibly
(if there are several lines) by beginning from those of the top. The direction of reading of the
vertical lines (yes, on the stele of Briona which was engraved with Cisalpine runes, there is
also a vertical line, not simple all that) from the bottom to the top (takos toutas).
The whole while placing oneself from the point of view of the consulting person, as we have
already said, for the Celtic priestess or the velede it is to be the opposite.
The consulting person takes three runes randomly that he puts without looking at, the first one
on his left, the second one just opposite him, and the third one on his right. If there are
bethen engraved on the hidden face, the clairvoyant is allowed to turn them over.
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- If the three runes are right side up, the answer is positive.- If they are upside down all the
three, the answer is negative.
In other cases, two right side up and one upside down, or conversely, it will be necessary to
moderate the answer according to the runes present in the drawing. It is often considered that
the rune the most on the left represents the past, that of the middle the present and the
bethen who is the most on the right, the future. It is necessary to refine the answer by
referring to the meaning of the runes forming the three bethen.
The drawing of the simple sun votive wheel: with five runes.
4
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5
This second type of drawing makes it possible to make an assessment, a personal
analysis.The three central positions (123) correspond to past, present and future. They are
the three bethen.The higher position (4) conveys the assistance the consulting person can
hope for; the lower position, still for the consulting one (5) gives an answer to a question or to
the state of a situation, but without the possibility of interpretation and without nuance.As for
the consultation of the three bethen of the previous figure, the figure of the basic sun votive
wheel makes it possible an interpretation which ranges from three months in the past, until
three months in the future, with ten days of interval in the prediction.
Some current charlatans add the drawing of the Celtic cross: with ten runes. This drawing has
similarities with the tarot*. Just like it and just like the cross wrongly known as Celtic (the
Welsh vocabulary of the Celtic cross is due to Iolo Morganwg and that makes it very suspect)
it is consequently an imposture. We therefore advise to the comrunos sticking to the first two
methods.
* Of which some cards are nevertheless disconcerting: for example the hanged man, the
wheel of fortune, etc.
But let us return to our sheep, the runes of the Cisalpine alphabet. These runes are grouped
into three families (aicmi, plural of aicme) of six, five, and four feda (letters) each one.
The first family (aicme) of runes, the VETARK, is ascribed to Aesus and expresses what
concerns the life of Man as well as his daily life. This first aicme represents the fertility, the
fruitfulness, the force of the life and its manifestations in Man. Here it is the world of the mind
development (of the human being) which prevails over. It is the aicme of “Knowledge.”
Uruz (U and V). Fehu or Feoh (E). Gebo, Gyfu (T and D). Ansuz or Os (A). Raido or Radh
(R). Kaunan, Kenaz, Ken (C, G, K).
The second group expresses all what concerns the external forces and the elements, and
symbolizes the disturbing powers of the daily life. It is associated with the great Hornunnos
(Heimdall in the Germanic world). This second aicme represents the world which surrounds
us. It shows us how to be integrated there or take part in it. It is the intermediate world
between the men and the god-or-demons. It is the aicme of “Power.” This family of fedas
(Cisalpine letters) represents the evolution of Man towards a greater development of his mind
and of his inner magic, it makes him increase psychologically. Algiz, Eolh, Elhaz (X); Hagalaz,
Haegl (NR); Isaz, Is (I); Eihwaz, Eoh (S); Pertho, Peorth (L).
The third aicme forms the group of Noadatus/Nuada/Nodons/Lludd (equivalent of Tyr in Celtic
mythology); it expresses all what concerns sacredness, spirituality and faith. This last family
of fedas expresses the world of the divine forces in their relationship with men, but also their
role in destiny. It is the aicme of the “daring” or of the “doing.” It is made up of the four last
fedas (letters) of the Cisalpine alphabet. Ehwaz, Eh (M). Mannaz, Man (SS or barred D).
Laguz, Laukaz (P and B). Ingwaz, Ing (O).
The last rune is the white rune (Wynd) and, like the red pebble of the Irish crann chur,
comprises no sign. It is called in Celtic language forfeda, which means “additional letter") and
in Germanic wyrd from an Indo-European stem - uert “to make the wheel turn, to spin.” But
who is the Celticist who will be able to resist the temptation to also make it a wynd or white
page, on which to write our future (in this case wynd, from the Celtic language vindos white).
The white rune or rune of the three fairies which weave our destiny (past present future).
Inseparable, these three fairies of matres or bethen type, exist only one compared to the
others.This rune called forfeda, of which it is good to specify that it is of absolute nature, can
announce an inevitable event; but in such a case, we should not confuse inevitable and
defeatism. What is inevitable can take a positive or negative form. In fact, everything depends
on the place of Wynd in a drawing and of other Cisalpine letters which were combined with it.
This white rune can also announce a radical change in a particular field related to the
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consulting person. There still, that can take an advantageous or disastrous turn. Lastly,
another interpretation which one can give to Wynd, is that of secret: the white rune means
that something must remain secret, for the greatest benefit of the consulting one. Or that the
gods do not want to reveal somebody what awaits him because this person does not deserve
to know his destiny.
The different fedas of the Cisalpine or Lepontic alphabet.
- Ansuz or Os (A). Associated entity: the god-or-demon Aesus, or Hesus? This Celtic rune
has a meaning similar to that one of the Greek term logos, the word of God-or-Devil. It
represents the divine power, the power of control and of creation. From the point of view of
spirituality, it represents the prophecy and the revelation. It combines the ideas of wisdom,
knowledge, reason and communication. It is therefore a rune of initiation and good advice. It
can also refer to an examination, or simply to an interview. Associated trees: the
oak.Symbolizes voice, vital force, power, ability, influence, wisdom, various powers, travels.
This letter of Cisalpine alphabet concerns the field of the spirit. It speaks about knowledge
and training (vesus). It invites you to a kind of inner examination and perhaps you will need
the assistance of a person more expert than you in the field concerned.Advice: examine the
situation, think, express your desires, but do not decide anything hastily.
- Fehu or Feoh (E). Associated entity: the Termagant/Tervagan or Tarvos Trigaranos
(because of its three horns). This rune represents the cattle. In primitive societies, herds were
a sign of wealth. Fehu evokes the development of wealth, money and material possessions. It
is also the rune of energy and of toil. Enrichment can take many forms; it can also be a
spiritual richness. Fehu is the rune of the god-or-demon of the fruitfulness or fertility; the
fruitfulness is a precious possession and an elementary force. Associated flowers: the lily of
the valley. The lily of the valley can be used to treat heartbreak.Associated trees: the elder
tree. A tree which protects. This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet can also designate something
which is undertaken. A beginning, a starting, emergence. In every case, it is in connection
with the personal and social development, the fortune. Advice: recognize the fundamental
source of energy which is in us, and dialog with it, in order to better know your major desires,
and so to release your potential.
- Isaz, Is (I); symbolizes the ice, the stop, the blocking, the disassociation, the disunion. This
letter of the Cisalpine alphabet speaks about an obstacle, a getting colder in the relationship.
At work, that can be a fall of enthusiasm, or the passivity which gains the upper hand. In love,
the relationship lacks keenness, passion. Associated trees: the alder. Advice: for the moment,
freeze your plans, and wait until the situation improves by itself to do again.
- Kaunan, kenaz, ken (C, G, K). Associated entity? Brigindo/Brigantia/Brigit. This Celtic rune
throws lights on the path, disperses the darkness of unknowing, and helps us to see with
wisdom. The Scottish verb “to ken” at the same time means to see, to know and to recognize.
This rune underlines the fact that knowledge must lead us towards a certain form of action,
and the light in the middle of darkness indicates clearly the spiritual direction. Ken also
represents the natural war which comes out of the hearth, and consequently it is the sign of a
robust and good health. The light associated with the action symbolizes the creativity and the
rise of new ideas. Associated flowers: the broom. The yellow color of this flower symbolizes
the light of Ken and its creating fire. Associated trees: the pine. A tree which supplies a
purifying incense and which represents enlightenment. This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet is
an ambivalent rune. It symbolizes the fact that our inner flame must be used to illuminate the
night of our erratic behavior. Like a lighthouse, this flame will guide us by moving aside
darkness. It is therefore an optimistic Cisalpine rune because it presages a beginning (or a
restarting). If you were sick, it indicates the recovery. But this letter of the Cisalpine alphabet
also means ulcer, boil, abscess, disturbance, illness, disorder, restlessness, morbidity.
Advice: to act and especially not to give up. If it is within the framework of a sentimental
adventure, it is the forerunner of the beginning of intimate relation, because this letter of the
Cisalpine alphabet evokes good moments.
- Pertho, peorth (L). This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet symbolizes fruit trees, thought,
communication, connections, ideas, inspiration, words, pleadings, sermons, quarrels, play,
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pleasures, sexuality. This letter also evokes hidden events. It signifies the importance of a
mystery, the revelation of a secret, the possibility of finding something (or somebody), the
opportunity to have a second chance, etc. Associated trees: the aspen (poplar) as well as the
beech. Advice: follow your intuition. It is in what you do not see (but that you can guess) that
the elements of the solution are hidden.
- Ehwaz, Eh (M). Celtic language mandus, horse, pony. The speed, the strength and the
beauty of horses have always led in considering this rune as being much more than a simple
means of transport. In a metaphorical way, it is a sacred animal, the vehicle of a material and
spiritual progress. Associated trees: ash and oak. This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet
symbolizes the situation of the moment, the change. That can indicate a change of work, a
business trip, travel or moving. Source of progress, this figure asks you for a true open-
mindedness. Advice: stand ready to take the lead, to adapt, to have a change of scene.
Physically or spiritually, you must move, travel, discover. Remove the old problems and
launch into adventure.
- Hagalaz, Haegl (NR). Similar to an unexpected hailstorm: symbolizes an elementary
disturbance of your life. When this rune is combined with other letters of the Cisalpine
alphabet, it can suggest a limit, an interruption or a postponement and it indicates a total
change of direction. Can also mean a suffering, a difficulty, a disease or a wound.Associated
flowers: the fern. This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet symbolizes the hazards of life, the
problems and the little frustrations of everyday life. But also on the contrary joy and warmth
after a thaw. Advice: remain vigilant; your plans are likely to change in an unexpected way.
Only caution and patience will lead you to success, because the final decision does not
depend on you.
- Laguz, Laukaz (P and B). Celtic language locos, the lake. This letter of the cisalpine
alphabet symbolizes water, mother, infinity, fruitfulness, creativity, sexuality, health,
regeneration, begetting. It is the archetypal female rune since it also symbolizes emotions,
intuition, dreams, imagination. Good omen therefore for all that relates to artistic creations.
Associated trees: the willow. Advice: do not ask yourself too many questions, let you go to
major desires; do not have doubts about your abilities. Your hidden talents (as those you do
not suspect yet) must shine through. Work on that.
- Mannaz, Man (SS or barred D). Celtic mannos: the man, every human being. This letter of
the Cisalpine alphabet symbolizes the human being. It expresses his potential for generosity,
friendship or altruism. It represents therefore his own qualities, those which are to be used in
order to become better. Associated flowers: the foxglove. A very toxic plant, but if it is used
correctly, it can relieve the problems of blood circulation. Associated trees: the holly
(=butcher’s broom, Latin frisco). It is supposed to protect houses against maleficent intruders.
Advice: you have a real power on the events and you will find the solution of your problem in
yourselves. Only!
- Raido, Radh, (R). Celtic redia/redo, to ride. This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet symbolizes
the ride, the effort, the work, the change, the confrontation, the conflict. It is a rune which
announces a trip, a journey. It is also some good news or some changes. In the professional
field, some projects take shape, plans change and some negotiations bring new contracts.
Associated trees: the ash. The ash is sacred in all Northern Europe. It is a tree which can be
35 m high and 3 m of the circumference. It provides a hard and very resistant white wood,
which is particularly used to make hoops of barrels or vats. Advice: stand ready to change
your course, to travel, to open your mind to the change.
- Eihwaz, Eoh (S). Celtic language ivos, the yew. This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet
symbolizes life, evolution. This tree is therefore associated with death, nevertheless, it should
be pointed that the yew is an evergreen tree, and that death is the main door to be born again
in another world. This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet should not therefore be dreaded,
because it also symbolizes continuity and endurance. The bows of better quality were always
made with wood of yews; solid, resistant and endowed with a great flexibility. Associated
trees: the yew, of course! Advice: positive changes are to be envisaged. Control your
emotions; stand ready to take up all the challenges.
- Gebo, Gyfu (T and D). In the Celtic culture, a gift causes always another one in return. This
letter of the Cisalpine alphabet can therefore also mean a partnership or a union, in
businesses as in love. Associated trees: the elm, more particularly the white elms. This Celtic
rune symbolizes a cause to be defended, a commitment, a sale, a giving up, a sacrifice, a
renunciation, a devotion, a sex act. It is in the field of associations that this letter of the
Cisalpine alphabet is most favorable. It speaks about exchanges, peace or generosity. In your
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work, the collective action, the collaboration, lead to success. In love, the omen is excellent:
supported unions, lasting affairs and shared feelings. Advice: this Celtic rune is a warning
against indecision and selfishness. It is by thinking of the other (or of the others), by offering a
gift, by pleasing, that successes are gotten.
- Uruz, Ur (U and V). Celtic language urus: the aurochs, a bovid with a very high size,
disappeared today. This rune evokes the spiritual force, the fundamental power of virility or of
health. Associated trees: the birch. A tree which brings luck and abundance within a home.
This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet symbolizes the power, the vitality, the physical health, the
sexual energy, the dynamism. Evolution, beneficial change, especially in the professional
field. Advice: you must act with determination and provide efforts, because a significant
progression of your working environment can take shape. You must act with energy, because
new responsibilities are to be taken. Your abilities will be tested.
- Algiz, Elhaz, Eolh (X). Celtic language, alcos, alces, the elk (moose). It is the rune the Great
Horned one (Hornunnos) by definition. This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet evokes at the
same time the antlers of a deer, but also suggests the hands raised towards the heaven of
the man who prays. It is a powerful guarantee of protection and of spirituality; it symbolizes
the elevation towards the divinity. This Celtic rune also refers to the idea of success through
efforts in hunting, search or any other enterprise, and therefore symbolizes protection,
defense, danger, wild beasts, help, and favors.
- Ingwaz, Ing (O). This letter of the Cisalpine alphabet symbolizes balance, peace, harmony,
order, serenity, fulfillment. The harmony comes from the meeting of all the elements which
make up our personality as much bodily as spiritually. So the path of personal development
is opened. A symbol of fertility or of birth, this letter of the cisalpine alphabet evokes a happy
conclusion, but also a revival. It is an end or a renewal. It is a rune which expresses the
culmination, the achievement of a project.Precious stone associated: the amber. Associated
flowers: gentian. A plant which supports digestion. Associated trees: the apple tree. Advice:
you are on the verge to make a fresh start. Have confidence!
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APPENDIX No. 2.
TRUE HISTORY OF IRELAND.
The little we know of pre-Christian time in Ireland comes us from some rare mentions in
writing of Greek or Roman authors, from poetry and local mythology, as well as from
archaeology.
The Mesolithic era (8 000 before our era - 4.500 before our era).
The History of the island cannot be studied as such as from approximately 8.000 years ago.
Before that, because of the glacial era, the sea level was much lower, which had as a
consequence that Ireland was attached to England, and England to the continent. There was
therefore no island being likely to be called Ireland, Ireland did not exist, still! There was
therefore in what would become Ireland the same type of prehistoric men as in France and
Spain or in northern Europe and endowed with the same Mesolithic hunter-gatherer
civilization (see the site of Gwendoline Cave in County Clare), Maglemosian or Azilian, to
name them only. Things will then change completely.
The ices moved back little by little, and from - 6000, Ireland was isolated from England by the
rise in the water level.From Scandinavia, some populations of men living on hunting and
fishing cross Great Britain in the direction of the plateaus in Wicklow and Antrim. It is
generally admitted indeed that the first inhabitants colonized initially the North-East of the
island by coming from Scotland.
The Mount Sandel site in Coleraine (Northern Ireland) teaches us that they lived in huts with a
central hearth, but apart from that, we know only a few things, particularly as regards their
rites.
The Neolithic age (4 500 before our era - 2.500 before our era).The revolution that agriculture
represents generated a rapid development of the population in the Middle East, and this one
extends little by little towards Europe.
The best known heritage of these peoples is religious. They are the tombs set up for the late
ones. The funerary rites and the foundation of these megalithic tombs (from the Greek
megos, broad, and lithos, stone) required, for a tribal group, an important effort of
organization. The increase in population necessary to their construction can be caused by
another thing than the arrival of new migrants, and was perhaps only the simple consequence
of the introduction of agriculture.
We should in no way ascribe to Celts and therefore all the more so to druids, the paternity
of megalithic achievements (to whom they were, however, ascribed until the beginning of the
20th century, but that the archaeology and the methods of modern dating ended up by
restoring to the previous cultures, sometimes former of much). For example, Stonehenge, that
people said during a long time to be built by Merlin the enchanter himself, and which dates
back in fact to several tens of centuries before our era.They are not either the Celts who are
at the builders of the alignments at Carnac in Armorica. It is necessary to give back to
Caesar which is Caesar’s…Moreover, we should not confuse the complex of the tumulus
civilizations in Central Europe with the mounds of British Isles, like that of Newgrange in
Ireland, which are by far former to the appearance of the Celtic people in a strict sense of the
word.That does not mean that portal tombs and other megaliths have nothing to do with the
Celts. These monuments they found while arriving took considerable importance in their
symbolic system and in their mythology. If Stonehenge was undoubtedly not the place of
druidic worship that some people like to describe, it does not have less excited the
imagination of the newcomers about it, deeply. Let us imagine the Celts in front of such an
achievement, of which their own tradition did not ascribe themselves construction: they were
quick to invent peoples of giants, or some god-or-demons endowed with colossal forces, to
explain their building. The numerous mounds of Ireland formed part of the Irish tradition by
the means of the men of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), become the god-or-
demons of Ireland. According to the legend, having been overcome by the human beings,
they indeed agreed to give up the surface of the land to them. And some of them took refuge
then in palaces which they built under hillocks, becoming thus invisible in the eyes of men.
We understand therefore well the meaning of mounds in the tradition of the Celtic invaders in
Ireland. While arriving on the island, they found there these mounds empty. But impressed by
these monuments apparently unrealizable by ordinary human beings, they ascribed them to
invisible God-or-demons (because these mounds seeming empty, their occupants could be
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only invisible) resulting from their own Panth-eon or pleroma; but that they adapted to the
geography of their host land.In the end, the result remains therefore the same one from the
point of view of religion. The megaliths and the mounds of Ireland were Celtized by the druidic
tradition, as were so rivers, lakes and mountains of the countries in which they settled. And
there is nothing abusive to use them in order to illustrate the first page of a web site about the
Celts, for example…
On the historical level, on the other hand, it is necessary to remain precise: they are the
people of the Neolithic era and of the beginning of the Bronze Age, and not the Celts, who are
the builders of the most part of the standing stones in the European continent.We should not
see in them besides an intervention of “aliens,” as the French Robert Charroux and the like
proclaim over and over again. This same Robert Charroux, who finds nevertheless some
editors in France to publish his insane vaticinations, also affirms that South American
civilizations were founded by the Celts…)
The Bronze Age (2 500 before our era, 700 before our era).The previous period is called
Chalcolithic or Copper Age; it is the period during which the most part of the axes of Ballybeg
and Lough Ravel was produced.
Circa 2100 before our era, some Indo-European newcomers (proto-Celts) from North-West of
Europe, introduce their hierarchical social order, their religion, and their (pre-Celtic) language,
gradually. However, they would not have been more than few thousands.
Bronze Age begins truly only when copper is combined with tin in order to produce objects out
of bronze. In Ireland, that occurred around - 2.000, when some flat axes and similar artifacts
were made in Ballybeg. Bronze was used to make at the same time weapons and tools.
Swords, axes, daggers, halberds, awls, goblets, trumpets, are among the objects discovered
on the sites of the Bronze Age. The Irish craftsmen became particularly famous for their horn-
shaped trumpets made through the process of lost wax. We find some of them in the whole
Europe, and you can see the representation of one of them in a Greek sculpture ascribed to
Epigonus, representing a Galatian warrior dying and sung by Byron (quotation from memory).
I see before me the gladiator lie: he leans upon his hand.His brow consents to death, but
conquers agony...His drooped head sinks gradually low...The arena swims around him, he is
gone!(Childe Harold’s pilgrimage. Canto IV. Stanza 140).
A copy of this famous statue always as much moving can still be admired in the museum of
the Washington State Historical Society in Tacoma. The Irish horn-shaped trumpet is clearly
visible there. It appears on the ground (on the base of the statue) in an isolated way.
Copper, necessary to the making of bronze, was then mainly extracted from the South-east of
the country, while tin was imported from Cornwall in Great Britain. The oldest copper mine
known in these islands is located in the peninsula of Ross Island, in the County Kerry. Mining
and metallurgy were carried out on the spot between 2400 and 1800 before our era. Another
of the copper mines best preserved in Europe was discovered on Mount Gabriel, in county
Cork. It functioned during several centuries in the middle of the second thousand years. It is
estimated that the mines of Cork and Kerry did not produce less than 370 tons of copper
during the Bronze Age. As the objects out of bronze discovered represent perhaps only 0, 2%
of this production, we can suppose that Ireland was one of the main copper exporters of the
time.Ireland was also rich in free gold, and Bronze Age witnessed the first important
exploitation of this precious metal by Irish craftsmen. In whole Europe, it is in Ireland that the
largest number of gold hoards of the Bronze Age was discovered. Ornaments of this metal
made in Ireland were found as far as Germany and Scandinavia. At the beginning of the
Bronze Age, these ornaments consisted of simple crescents or disks made with thin gold
sheets. Later, Irish torc appeared. It was a necklace made of a bar or of a twisted metal
ribbon, bent into the form of a loop. Earrings out of gold, solar disks and lunulae (lunar
crescents worn around the neck) were also made in Ireland during the Bronze Age. One of
the most distinctive types of pottery, the bell-shaped ceramics, made its appearance on the
island during the Bronze Age. It differed much from the finely made round-bottomed pottery of
the Neolithic era. The Irish variant of this pottery is of local origin, and its appearance is the
evidence of a foreign influence more than of an invasion.Small wedge-shaped gallery graves
(some tombs?) continued to be built during the Bronze Age, but the imposing dolmens or
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portal tombs, with passage, of the Neolithic era, were given up. Around the end of the Bronze
Age, the first graves with cists appeared: they consisted of a small rectangular stone chest,
covered with a stone lab, and buried a short distance below the surface. Many stone circles
were erected at this time, particularly in Munster and Ulster.At the end of this time, the
population of Ireland was probably higher than 100,000 souls, and can have been as high as
200,000.
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APPENDIX No. 3.
CHRISTIAN DELIRIUM
AS REGARDS HISTORY.
We could see with the incredible jumble of the legends about Fenius Farsaid and the origin of
the Irish language; the damage that the third-rate Christian under-culture added with snippets
of Graeco-Latin classical culture; could cause in the minds, or at least in weak minds.
The advent of Christianity indeed was for the history of Mankind an unprecedented cultural
disaster. An army of men in black (in the East, cradle of the movement) or brown (the frieze
frock of the monks in the West) fell down on libraries and monuments; in order to set up,
much before Orwell, the most pitiless thought police or mind checkering which is. The image
which comes immediately to mind is that of the Afghan Muslims making the admirable
Buddhas of Bamiyan explode with dynamite.The comparison is obvious! The Christians of
that time were some fanatics of the worst species and the black is besides still the color of the
different Greek orthodox priests. Let those who doubt go and see the excellent movie that
Alejandro Amenabar devoted in 2009 to this true saint woman (see John Toland) who was the
unfortunate and beautiful Hypatia of Alexandria, stoned to death by these new barbarians! It
is enough to replace “pagan” by “Christians” and “Christians” by “Muslims”; to have an
astonishing anticipation of what awaits for our country, and even the whole Europe, in a few
decades hardly. But how many members of the caste of the new thought policy that are
journalists, saw that there was in this film as a metaphor for what awaits us with Salafi Islam?
None in France in any case!
Hypatia personifies the no longer really believing, because too much evolved, too much
educated, "Christians"; but she ends up in the same boat (there are besides scenes on a boat
in the film) as stauncher “Christians“ and who try to react… but too late, much too late, as the
film shows well to us. As for the Prefect Oreste, he is the very prototype of the “Christian“ or
“left-wing“ it is said in Europe, a politician or politicker ( others practice takkiya) who “thinks”
the best means of fighting radical Islam is still to support and encourage, “moderate“ Islam.In
his case this support will go even as far as a conversion to this Islam known as “moderate “.
But in vain! And we have even the Taliban known as Parabolani in this prophetic or at the
very least premonitory film. An incredible lead weight was then closed over Mankind! Just
like journalists of today in the media or in the famous Orwell’s novel, the Christian copyist
monks of the Middle Ages have bowdlerized works which were not situated in their circle of
influence and have rewritten the History while smuggling here and there various
interpolations, or antedated mentions, in the manuscripts which partly escaped their
prosecution, even their potential hatred. Because there never was something more potentially
hateful, of life, of the forces of life, of the joy of living than those who, like Jews Christians and
Salafi Muslims, have only the word love in their mouth! And let us point out well that the
golden age of the Muslim empire is not due to the genius of its religion but to the rapid spread
from east to west on a territory now unified (through the sword) of inventions from vanquished
peoples (Chinese paper and silk, Indian numerals, Greek astronomy, etc.)
In Ireland, the result was particularly catastrophic. A third-rate under-culture based on
unbridled creationism and biblism. The so harmonious work developed by generations of high
knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) sensitive and cultivated, was ransacked, mutilated,
distorted, weighed down with additions having nothing to do there, sometimes to the extent to
become literally incomprehensible. Our reader must therefore have constantly in mind this
warning. He should not expect to find a clear and coherent set, with an intact doctrinal purity
(as regards druidism); what remains of the ancestral work of the fine well-read men who were
the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), Irish, is only a waste land covered with
rubble. It is unceasingly necessary to guess or to go beyond appearances to extract the
essence from it.As we could see and say , the creationism and the biblism of the Christian
monks of the Middle Ages maintained in this field a true second-rate under-culture which
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lasted for centuries and of which here an example. The Annala Rioghachta Eireann or Annals
of the Four Masters (i.e., Michael O'Clery, Fergus O'Mulconry, Peregrine O'Clery, and
Peregrine O'Duigenan).According to these Christian chroniclers, all these events took place
approximately at the time of the Trojan War. It goes without saying all these dates are false
and even almost imaginary. The Christian authors have nothing understood to the meta-
historical or timeless nature, but purely symbolic, of all these adventures and, besotted by the
third-rate under culture which was theirs; they systematically brought down everything to the
Old Testament.
Year 2242 after the creation of the world.People of Cessair. This first history is a staggering
mixture of original pan-Celtic but also Hebraic even older (Sumerian) traditions, due to the
monks in charge of its new transcription. We therefore find in it topics such as Noah's Ark or
universal Flood (a Sumerian fable, see the story of Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh epic).Son of
Noah, Bith was not authorized to embark on the ark. However, a god-or-demon advises him
some time before the flood to build his own ship, and thus Bith will sail on the floods during
seven long years until the day when, finally, he comes alongside another land. The daughter
of Bith, named Cessair, marries then a man by the name Fintan. Fifty days later (obvious
Christian addition), the announced Flood submerges Ireland and all the family of Cessair dies
drowned, except for Fintan who was changed into salmon. Fintan will survive the different
invasions thereafter, still thanks to his numerous transformations: stag, wild boar, falcon,
salmon; and finally he will be born again in the shape of a man in the bosom of a woman who
will have eaten it “.
Year 2520 after the creation of the world.Once water of the Flood withdrawn, Partholon, son
of Sera, a young parricide in exile, accompanied by 24 men and their wives, will arrive by the
west and will invade therefore in turn the country 278 years after the Flood, the feast day of
Beltene (May 1st). Initially a single plain dug out with three lakes, Partholon increases his
territory, which will have soon four plains and seven new lakes. His companions multiply and
are five thousand at the end of three hundred years. They are farmers. They clear the forest
for their cultivation; make lakes, plains and rivers springing up. They invent laws, rituals, beer,
and they excel in the making of cauldrons (particularly those which are out of gold). Their
reign will last five hundred years. They succeed in containing the gigantic anguipedic
wyverns, the famous Fomoire, name meaning: under the sea (Andernas on the
Continent .Come before the flood? Having survived the flood) who took refuge in other
islands. They come from an entity called Domnu (the abyss) and are sometimes also known
as “Giants of the Sea“. Some have bodies without arms or legs; others are endowed with
animal heads, in major part of goat. They represent chaos. Of a violent nature, they are
represented as being distorted: one hand, one eye, one foot… They feed mainly on fish, birds
or on the tributes that will pay them thereafter the peoples that they will dominate. Many, they
are described as dreadful, inhuman and demonic, or are endowed with magic powers.Other
variants of their name: Fomóiri, Fomoraig, Fomhóraigh, Fomhoire, Fomorii, Fomor, Fomors,
Fomoré, Fo-Muir, Foawr (in Mannish or Manx language).
Year 2530 after the creation of the world.The gigantic anguipedic wyverns (the Fomoire, also
Fomore in Gaelic) resurface, let by their chief, the Cyclops Cichol Gricenchos (ach), son of
Goll, son of Garbh. They are defeated by Partholon, and therefore exterminated, but they will
constantly be next the three following races before being finally overcome by a fourth one, the
warriors of the clan of the goddess Danu (bia).
Year 2820 after the creation of the world.The race of Partholon is hit by an epidemic and dies
out in one week during Beltene (May 1st). Nine thousand Partholonians die on Sean Magh
Ealta Edair, i.e., five thousand men and four thousand women. Their common burial would be
Tallaght hills, close to Dublin. Ireland is deserted for thirty years (until the arrival of Nemed).
Year 2850 after the creation of the world.Thirty years later, around 2.600 before the common
era, Nemed (whose name means sacred) come alongside Ireland. In the image of Partholon,
this race is made of farmers and continues the work of its predecessors. But a new plague
also falls down on them. The surviving Nemedians fall under the yoke of the Fomoire
(Andernas on the Continent) come back again in force, and must pay them each Samon
(November 1st) a heavy tribute: 2/3 of corn, of milk as well as some children (cf. the Ottoman
devshirme).
Year 3066 after the creation of the world.Assault on the tower of Conand located on Tory
Island, by the people of Nemed. A general uprising against the Fomoire that linguists call
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Andernas on the Continent. Killings and massacre, there are only thirty survivors who
disperse. Ireland becomes again uninhabited during two hundred years.
Year 3266 after the creation of the world.Here is placed the biggest blunder of the Irish
Christians as regards chronology, the irruption of Fir Bolg Fir Domnann and Gaileoin
(because there are also some Gauls : in Irish Galióin, Gaileoin, Gáileóin, Gáilióin, Gailioin) in
the history or Ireland circa - 2.400 before our era. Whereas this could only be done quite after.
In the Irish chronology of the Lebor Gabala Erenn indeed, Fir Bolg Gauls arrive in the country
at the time of Lugnasade (August 1st). The name of Bolg would have a connection with the
lightning. Ill-treated by Fomoire, that linguists call Andernas on the Continent, these Bolg and
these Gaileoin become warriors, but are finally defeated by the Tuatha Dé Danann or people
of the goddess Danu (bia).
Editor’s note.According to the model proposed by O'Rahilly, the Fir Bolg should be linked to
the historical Belgae, of the Continent or of Great Britain, and to the Builg of Munster; the Fir
Domnann to the British Dumnonii of Great Britain, as for the Gaileoin it would be the Laigin,
who founded Leinster. According to O’Rahilly, the three groups probably would be Ivernic-
speaking peoples (that is to say speaking a P-Celtic language) who would have inhabited
Ireland before the Goidelic-speaking people or Gaels (that is to say speaking a Q-Celtic
language).
Year 3303 after the creation of the world.Tenth and last year of the reign of Eochaid, son of
Erc. Arrival of the gods or demons coming from the islands north of the world: the Túatha Dé
Dánann. The account of that fighting, appearing in a manuscript of the 15th, constitutes the
most important piece of the cycle of the Irish version of the original pan-Celtic myth.
A first battle is fought in the plain of the pillars i.e., of the standing stones. The Irish Christian
euhemerization located this battle of the original pan-Celtic myth in Moytura (Magh
Thuireadh), close to Cong, in current County Mayo.God-or-demons of the goddess-or-
demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), leave the plain victorious, but during the battle, their king
Nuada loses his right hand. This mutilation involves his deposition from the sovereign power.
A hand articulated out of silver then is forged and adapted by the skillful healer who is
Diancecht.
Year 3304 after the creation of the world. Forced by the circumstances to resign, the “silver
handed” monarch is replaced by Bres, son of Elatha and Princess Eriu of the clan of the
goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, Danu (bia). The two enemy races are become
allies through various marriages. Bres marries Brigit, daughter of Dagda, while Cian, son of
Diancecht, marries Ethniu, daughter of Balor; endowed with a single but baleful eye (he has
the evil eye in a way).But Bres will very quickly turn out to be an odious tyrant. He
overburdens the people of taxes and corvees (forced labors, unpaid). He makes fun of
Caibre, son of Ogma, greatest file (bard) of the clan of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if
this term is preferred, Danu (bia).
Year 3310 after the creation of the world.Bres is compelled in turn to abdicate! It is Nuada
who comes to throne, and he can do it, because his natural and cut hand was stitched up to
his wrist thanks to the skill and the incantations of Miach, son of Diancecht. What earns Miach
to be assassinated by his jealous father.
Year 3330 after the creation of the world.Bres, however, holds a secret council in his
underwater residence. He persuades the Fomoire (called Andernas on the Continent) to help
him to drive out the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this term is
preferred, Danu (bia).The preparations of the war last seven years. Years during which grows
up Lug, the prodigy child, “master of all arts,” born from the union of Cian and Ethniu. Lug
organizes the resistance of the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu
(bia), while Goibniu forges weapons for them and that Diancecht makes a marvelous spring
spout out which heals the wounds and brings back to life the dead. But some
Fomoire/Andernas spies discover it, and make it become dried by filling it with stones.After
some isolated duels or skirmishes, a great battle begins in the plain where other standing
stones are erected, even more imposing than the first ones. The Irish euhemerization of the
original pan-Celtic myth located this second battle of Moytura or Magh Thuireadh more north
in the plain of Carrowmore, close to Sligo.
!- -------------------- ----------------------------------------------!
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Editor’s note. In the original pan-Celtic myth, of course, this single (or double) battle was
supposed to have occurred in an unspecified place, or more exactly perhaps in any place ,
exceptional enough to be likely to have been the field of it. The Celtic invaders arriving in
moors covered with megalithic monuments indeed could consider these places only as having
been the scene of gigantic battles between more or less superhuman creatures.One has
evidence of that on the Continent with the legend of St Cornelius in Carnac.
It goes without saying also that no pope of this name (Cornelius) ever came in these places,
that still forms one of the innumerable untruths to which Christianity has accustomed us for a
long time, but the legend about him does not remain less interesting for all that!Whereas St
Cornelius, pope in Rome in the third century, fled persecutions (on the reality of the
aforementioned persecutions see our essay on, or more exactly against, Christianity), his
steps led him into Armorica. Accompanied by two oxen which transported his luggage, he
was one day early compared with the legionaries who chased him.Thus he arrived in a village
where he wanted to stop, but he heard a young girl who insulted her mother and… he
continued to move on. Along the way he saw peasants who sowed oats.
- What do you sow there? He asked to them.
- Oats, plowmen answered.
- Then you will be in a position to harvest these oats tomorrow, St Cornelius answered.Much
to the surprise of the peasants, the oats were indeed ripe the following day, and therefore
they hastened to scythe it.The same day, Romans arrived.
- Did you see a man with two oxen?
- Yes, whereas we were sowing these oats.
- He is too in advance on us then; we will never be able to catch him up.
The Romans, indeed very credulous according to that Christian legend, and not being able
to imagine only one moment that grain sown on the day before could be ripe as soon as the
following one, thought therefore that the man they hunted, had had to go through this place
many months before and they decided consequently to stop here in order to camp.But not far
from there, behind a bend of the ground, close to the locality named “The Moustoir” (a word of
old French meaning monastery, that some people link to the Irish term muintir, in any case
probably a sacred place, and this since the most ancient times) St Cornelius thought
nevertheless his final hour had come and hid in the ear of one of his oxen (?) When he saw
three of the Roman soldiers coming in his direction, he made a terrible decision and, using
the “great imprecation“ changed all the Romans into stones.Such is the origin of the Carnac
alignments, called since then in Breton language “soudardet san Cornily” or “soldiers of St
Cornelius.”
EDIROR’S NOTE. THE TRUTH ABOUT POPE CORNELIUS.
For a proven martyr, like, for example, the pope Fabian, executed in Rome at the beginning of
the year 250, how many Christians, even among the most eminent ones, escape any pursuit
with a confusing facility! Whereas the edict of Decius, it is said, foresaw death for all the
indomitable Christians, the great saint Cyprian of Carthage withdraws himself simply in his
country house and, from there, continues to direct his community! His colleague of Alexandria
has, roughly speaking, the same fate. And all that therefore, whereas the (lost) edict of Decius
stipulated, it seems, only a single punishment death - for those who refused to sacrifice to
the gods of the Empire (considered as some demons, it is true, by the Christians. We still
return to it).
Cornelius or Cornely in Breton language is the twenty-first pope and succeeds Fabian in
March 251, 16 months therefore after the death of this latter, January 10, 250. Many
Christians, after the measures taken by Decius, had abjured their faith by fear or opportunism.
They are now numerous to want to return in the Church. Two attitudes are then opposed: the
intransigent die hard around Novatian, and those supporting the forgiveness who succeed in
making Cornelius elected. A new schism appears consequently at once, because three Italian
bishops agree to consecrate Novatian whereas the near whole of the other Churches
recognize Cornelius. A synod, brought together in autumn 251, with the bishop Denis of
Alexandria and Cyprian of Carthage, approves the relative mercy of Cornelius about those
who have abjured in writing (the lapsi) and consequently excommunicates Novatian for his
intransigence towards those who have failed in their duty (the aforementioned lapsi). The
patriarch Fabian of Antioch, a supporter like many other Eastern bishops, of more firmness on
the principle nevertheless towards those who failed at the time of the previous events (always
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the famous lapsi) will be the recipient of a letter sent by Cornelius in which this one advocates
his point of view. The fragments that we still have of it, tell us that Rome at that time (middle
of the third century) has approximately 150 Christian ecclesiastics, including 7 deacons, 46
priests and… 52 exorcists [undoubtedly to clear all these unfortunate people from their pagan
gods or at least all those who believed to be possessed by the gods of paganism like Epona
or by others of the same kind. Beati pauperes spiritu!] And our text to specify: “All fed by the
divine kindness and the charity of their brothers”….
Official persecutions, under Septimus Severus and his successors, had not been therefore,
altogether, very bloody. And besides finally, for the Empire, the result was not that which was
hoped for, because the rallying of all these “lapsi” was only superficial. The Christians who
had agreed to sign the official papers presented to them were still only paper Romans, their
hearts were elsewhere in Jerusalem.They were never Roman hearted persons and that
weighed heavily for the continuation of the events (wars to be waged to the borders, struggle
against the barbarians, etc.). See on this subject Salvian of Marseilles even if he was not
completely wrong, of course! In any case he was right to be against St. Augustine of Hippo.
In short the problem of the lapsi will start the Novatian crisis after Pope Cornelius (251 - 253)
had decided to reintegrate them within the Church; and consequently, the most serious of the
first schisms of the Church, the Donatist schism.Around the end of the year 252 Cornelius will
be exiled, by order of the emperor Trebonianus Gallus, in Centumcellae/Civitavecchia, where
he dies in a natural way it seems, perhaps in 253. His body is brought back to Rome and is
laid down in the catacomb of Saint-Calixtus.But let us return to our sheep, finally to our
warriors changed into standing stones.
! ----------- ------------------------ ---------------------------------!
Second battle of Mag Thuireadh therefore. During a fierce fight, many warriors are defeated:
Indech, the son of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Domnu, is killed by Ogma, who dies in
turn. Balor “of the evil eye” knocks down Nuada with his fatal glance. But Lug, with his magic
sling, blinds Balor’s eye. Demoralized, the Fomoire that are called Andernas on the
Continent, move back and are cornered to the sea (under ground for the Continentals). Bres
is made prisoner, the hegemony of the gigantic wyverns or anguipedics is broken forever in
the island.
Year 3331 after the creation of the world.Reign of Lug Lamfhada, what means long-handed or
long-armed Lug. French language, language dear to our heart as the Gaelic of our friends in
Ireland or as the Welsh of the choruses of the same name; uses always the expression “to
have a long arm” (in allusion to the sling of Lug??) what means now to be able to do from a
distance through friends relations or numerous and top-ranking connections. It is under the
reign of this Lug that the fair in Tailtiu is established, in commemoration and memory of his
feeder mother, Tailtiu, daughter of Magmor, king of Spain, and wife of Eochaid, son of Erc,
and the last king of the Fir Bolg Gauls. After this victory, however, the power of the god-or-
demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), will be affected by a rapid decline.
Year 3370 after the creation of the world.Lug Lamfhada falls in front of Mac Cuill at
Caendruim. The first year of the reign of Eochaid Ollatair, also called Dagda.
Year 3471 after the creation of the world.Mac Cuill, Mac Cecht and Mac Greine last Tuatha
Dé Danann kings ruling the country.
Year 3.500 after the creation of the world.Here is placed the nth big historical mistake of the
Christian monks revisiting druidic mythology. Since the top of a high tower located on a
distant land, Spain, a prince named Ith one day sees Ireland. He decides to go there with 90
companions. But the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if this word is
preferred, Danu (bia), suspect him of being come to prepare an invasion and kill him. His
body is brought back to Spain but his people see there a pretext to attack the god-or-demons
of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia). Like the previous invaders, the new
immigrants arrive on May 1st. While marching on the center of the island, the newcomers
meet successively the three eponymous goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies if this term is
preferred, of this land, Banba, Fotla, as well as Eriu. Each one asks the druid Amergin,
adviser soothsayer of the sons of Mil, for calling the island according to her name.The sons of
Mil will overcome the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia), and
will take the country in which they will give birth to Gaels.
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HELP!! HELP!! Noah, the flood, Pharaohs, stop it, everything is false and completely false,
that has nothing to do with History, the true one!!!
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APPENDIX No. 4.
THE BOOK OF THE TAKING
OF IRELAND (Lebor Gabala Erenn).
We find again, of course, in the book of the taking of Ireland all the historical aberrations due
to the Christian second rate under culture, crossbred with a dash of badly digested Greco-
Latin classical culture that we have pointed out in the annals of the four masters. And for a
good reason since the latter were inspired by it.
The Tuatha Dé Danann are the great god (or demons of course) of the pagan Ireland, but
there was an interpolation in the legend: they should have invaded Ireland before since they
are previous to Celts.Monks or Irishmen having compiled in a more or less happy way all this
information, arrived at this point of our history, have made an enormous mistake of
chronology, or then straightforwardly a forgery. They interpolated at this place of their account
various fragments relating to Fir Bolg Gauls, what is historically impossible. Fir Bolg who are
some Celtic-speaking people having a P-language (Brittonic) can be only chronologically later
than the Celtic-speaking people of “Q “ type that are Gaels and who have kept this sound of
the primitive Indo-European (kw).During the 10th and during the 11th century, several long
poems claiming to be historical were added to all these accounts. Poems mainly due to:
- Eochaid ua Flainn (936-1004) of Armagh (poems 30, 41, 53, 65, 98, 109, and 111).
- Flann Mainistrech mac Echthigrin (dead in 1056), a lector and historian of the abbey of
Monasterboice (poems 42, 56, 67, and 82).
- Tanaide (dead towards 1075). Poems 47, 54, 86.
- Gilla Coemáin mac Gilla Shamthainne (1072?) Poems 13, 96,115.
All Christians, of course.
The Book of the Conquest of Ireland is therefore a compilation gathering some accounts
interrupted with prose and poetry, over which the Celtic bards and monks carried out a
destroying work.Excluding the credit that they had to preserve in writing certain topics or
certain details, their vandalism able to make the most fundamentalist Salafi Muslims dealing
with Jahiliyya, turn green with envy, will have been total. Armed with this under culture which
had survived the Dark Ages, they have begun while attaching the myths to the Bible, or to the
Greco-Latin Antiquity. Not understanding or understanding no longer what these stories told,
they made the initial mythological core a national historic masterpiece, adapting here and
everywhere the twists and turns of the plot to the places, and substituting some tribal stories
set upside down for the divine genealogies. Arrived in this very black water, the compilers got
mixed up more than once in the meanders of the Celtic panth-eon or pleroma and have
multiplied mistakes, while ending up making a son the grandfather of his father, for
example.See hereafter some works from which you can draw here and there various filiations
more or less contradictory.Peter Berresford Ellis, the Chronicles of the Celts. Carroll & Graf
Publishers, Inc., New York, 1999.T.W. Rolleston, Celtic Myths and Legends. Dover
Publications, Inc., New York, 1990.Charles Squire, Celtic Myth and Legend, Poetry and
Romance. Newcastle publishing Co. Inc., 1975.
! ---------------- ----------------------------- ---------- !
Dates and practical details of the Celtization of Ireland are still problematic.The relative
importance of the massive invasions and of the slow cultural spreading in the appearance of
the similarities is still debatable.
It was thought traditionally that the Celtization was due to a last wave of invaders called
Milesians or Gaels. But some recent genetic and archeological studies suggest now that the
adoption of the Celtic language and culture was a much more progressive process; supported
by cultural exchanges with Celtic groups of the inland of the country and of the south-west of
continental Europe.The only thing certain, however, it is the linguistic situation. The Celtic
languages spoken in the British Isles are divided into two distinct families, the Q-Celtic
language and the P-Celtic language.At the time when the first written documents appear in
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the fifth century, we find the Gaelic (Q Celtic) in Ireland and the Brythonic (P Celtic) in (Great)
Britain.It was therefore natural to suppose, first of all, that Ireland had begun by being
occupied by speakers of a Q-Celtic language; and Great Britain by speakers of a P-Celtic
language. So what to think?
Beakers arrived in Ireland around 2500 Before Common Era and fell out of use around 1700
Before Common Era. The beaker pottery of Ireland was rarely used as a grave good, but is
often found in domestic assemblages from the period. This stands in contrast to the rest of
Europe where it frequently found in both roles. The inhabitants of the Isle used ordinary food
vessels as a grave good instead. The advent of the Bronze Age Beaker culture in Ireland is
accompanied by the destruction of smaller satellite tombs at Knowth and collapses of the
great cairn at Newgrange, marking an end to the Neolithic culture of megalithic passage
tombs. The large, communal passage tombs of the Irish Neolithic were no longer being
constructed (although some, such as Newgrange were reused). The preferred method of
burial seems to have been single graves and cists in the east, or in small wedge tombs in the
west. Cremation was also common.
In an impossible to determine if it ever existed (the debate is raging in the scientific
community between long chronology and short chronology proponents) arrival into Ireland,
coming from the Continent, of Proto-Celtic peoples endowed with new types of swords or
axes, who end up overshadowing (or expelling, in Scotland, etc.) local peoples.A
phenomenon being spread out over a length difficult to specify, considering the rather
obscure nature (since protohistoric precisely) of all these struggles, but which in every case
marks a complete renewal of the age of the late bronze civilization. Accompanied by deep
transformations of religious thought and of its material expression in this part of Europe.What
is probable, it is these newcomers arrived into Ireland with a clergy already made up,
arranged hierarchically, in which were scientists to carry out ambitious projects. This clergy
that could be only the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht).Their constructions and the
rites which were performed there, upset thoroughly the religious mentality of the indigenous
peoples of the island.
T.F. O'Rahilly proposed a model for the Irish prehistory, based on his study of the influences
on Irish language, and a critical analysis of Irish mythology as well as pseudo-history (Early
Irish History and Mythology. Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1946). But his ideas are
still disputed.
He distinguishes four successive waves of Celtic invaders he dates as below.
- Priteni or Cruithne (around - 700 - 500) who gave their name to the British Isles, and
peopled Great Britain as well as Ireland.
- Hiberni Iverni, Erainn, or Builg in O'Rahilly (circa - 500). Celts speaking a “Brythonic”
language.
- Laigin, Domnainn and Gaileoin (circa - 300).
- Goidels or Gaels (circa - 100).
The first peopling of the country: Cruithne or Priteni (- 700 - 500).
Circa - 700, appearance in the country of Celtic-speaking people having a “p” Celtic language,
Pritani or Pretani. These Pritani were not the first inhabitants of the island which was already
peopled on their arrival. But their importance in the settlement of that time is simply deduced
from the fact that Greek geographers, 500 years before our era, called the islands “Pretanic,”
Britannia is a name which comes from Priteni. Nothing states nevertheless that there was
then an “invasion“. It is perhaps better to consider a slower and more progressive
phenomenon, spread out over several centuries. In (Great) Britain these Pritani were
absorbed then assimilated by another wave of invaders, except for the extreme north of the
country where they were called Picts by Romans. What means “painted” or “tattooed” men,
because of war paints they had the practice to sport.
Note of Peter DeLaCrau found by his children in a binder.Really, contrary to what O'Rahilly
affirms, we are unaware of everything of the origin of Picts: their ancestors would have come
from the Continent at the end of prehistory, perhaps during the first thousand years before our
era.The first use of the qualifier Pict to designate peoples of the north of [Great] Britain
appears in the Panegyric IV, known as being that of Constantius, delivered in Trier on March
1st, 297, after the victorious return of the aforementioned Constantius from his expedition in
[Great] Britain.Paragraph XI: “In addition to that, a nation which was then primitive and
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accustomed to fight, still hall-naked, only with Picts and Hiberni.”It is a speech of Eumenius
(rhetor of the third century, born circa 260 in Autun, died circa 311).In 310, a mention of
“wood and marshes of Caledonians and other Picts” is known: its exact translation
nevertheless is problematic and makes possible or not to arrange Caledonians among Picts.A
little later Ammianus Marcellinus mentions that Picts are divided into two groups: Dicalydones
and Verturiones.According to a late tradition (of the ninth century?), known thanks to a copy
on parchment of the 14th century (Colbertin manuscript or Latin manuscript 4126 in the
National Library of Paris), the foundation of the Pict people would go back to mythical
Cruithne, son of Cinge, who would have ruled a century and would have had seven sons: Fib,
Fidach, Fotlaig, Ce, Cait, Fortrenn and Circinn. The latter then divided the white island (Alban,
Caledonia) into seven clans taking up their name: Fortriu, Caithness, Circind, etc. This
information appears in the list of the Pict kings and a text entitled De situ Albanie, attached to
this list: both form part of the Pictish Chronicle.The name of this founder was brought closer to
Pritenii or Pretenii, name of the inhabitants of the island of Britain allegedly reported by
Pytheas, in - 325, and quoted by Diodorus of Sicily, in the century before our era; the Latin
name Britanni, the Irish name Cruithni and the later Welsh name Prydyn, could have the
same origin.In 600, it is under the hand of Isidore of Seville that the first reference to the fact
that Picts get their name from tattooing which decorated their body appeared. This idea was
brought closer by modern historians to information that Julius Caesar in connection with the
Bretons reports:
Omnes vero se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod cæruleum efficit colorem, atque hoc horridiores
sunt in pugna aspectu.”
The [Great] British, indeed, dye themselves with woad, which occasions a bluish color, and
thereby have a more first terrible appearance in fight.”Perhaps according to some historians,
Picts used a Celtic language, of the Brythonic group. St Columba of Iona, during the sixth
century, did not understand it. They practiced oghamic writing, derived from Latin writing, but
the inscriptions they left are generally unintelligible.More recent studies seem to indicate than
the original language of the Picts - or at least an important substrate of their language - did
not form part of the Indo-European group; even if the poverty of the known vocabulary does
not make unquestionable conclusions possible.Picts left many standing stones decorated with
geometrical figures (including crosses following their Christianization), or figurative figures:
quadrupeds, birds, cauldrons, chariots with wheels. These stones, known as “symbolic“ were
perhaps sacred, probably combined with funerary rites.Certain brochs, these prehistoric
round towers with which the Scottish territory is dotted, are also ascribed to Picts. End of the
note.
In Ireland also Pritani had to move back, but had succeeded nevertheless in remaining more
or less in some places known as Cruithne or Cruthin, an adaptation of Priteni into “q” Celtic.
They lived alongside the powerful “Belgian” tribes of the kingdom of Dal Riada, which ruled
North-East of Ulster until the ninth century. Most famous of the Cruthin tribes having survived
until the beginning of Christianity in the country were those of Loíges and Fothairt in Leinster.
The name of the second of these tribes, modernized in Laois, was given to one of the
counties in Leinster formerly known as Queen’s county.The second wave of peopling of
Ireland: the Fir Bolg Gauls or Erainn (- 500)Around - 500 the Cruthin lose their dominant
position in Ireland with the arrival of a second wave of invaders also speaking a “p” Celtic
language: the Ivernians, Hiberni, or Erainn, a very important people of the far South-west of
Ireland (Munster). They are quoted by Ptolemy in the form “Iouernoi.” Their capital was Ivernis
(Greek Iouernis). It is possible that it is, in fact, the first true Celtic people come into Ireland.
He seems to have been the dominating people of the time.According to their own traditions,
the Erainn came from Great Britain, and there is no reason not to believe them on this
subject.The old form of the name Builg, Bolgi, makes them nevertheless some Belgians,
according to our friend Norman Mongan (Menapia Quest 1995). Their other name (Iverni) is
perhaps the cause of the traditional designation of Ireland. Hence the name of Hibernia or
Eueriio given to the very whole island, which will give Eriu later, Eire, Erin, Ireland.These
Belgian invaders colonize Great Britain and Ireland during the sixth and fifth centuries before
our era. They overwhelm the majority of the previous occupiers.The map of Claudius Ptolemy
shows us some Hibernians or Erainn a little everywhere in Ireland, but especially in the area
of Cork and Kerry. These tribes, also called Fir Bolg, were a people of sailors who wore
breeches or pants, had very sophisticated weapons (for the time) and had their origin going
back to a great goddess-or-demoness. Or a fairy if you prefer.According to James MacKillop,
the Corcu Loígde (or Corcu Laoíghdhe), Corcu Duibne (or Corcu Dhuibhne) in Kerry, Déisi in
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Waterford, Múscraige, Osraige; and lastly, in the North of the island, the Ulaid (hence the
name of Ulster) and Dál Riata,were Hibernians.Cairney also quotes the Dal Fiatach (probably
known of Ptolemy as Darini), Dál gCais, Partraige, Corcu Mordhruadh, Conmhaicne Rein, Uí
Bairrche, Uí Fidhgheinte, the Clan Choinleagain, Dál Cairpre Arad, Uaithni, Corcu Thine, and
the Uí Dauch.
The Corcu Loígde formed a people settled between the Bandon River and the sea, in the
south-west of county Cork, in the far south of Ireland. Some specialists think that Ptolemy’s
Iverni precisely corresponded to the Corcu Loígde. It was the dominant people in the south of
Munster before the arrival of the Eóganachta.
The Corcu Duibne were a people living in the West of County Kerry, and particularly around
Dingle Bay. MacKillop thinks their name came from that of a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy,
called Dob [h] inia, and notes that the Old woman of Beara (Cailleach Bhéirre) was a
character pertaining to the folklore of the Corcu Duibne…
The Uluti (Ulaid in middle Irish or Gaelic) were the Hibernian people having given his name to
the Province of Ulster. They designated themselves by the name of descendants of Rudraige
(Clanna Rudraige). During centuries the Uluti were the dominant tribe in the North of the
country. They are them who founded Emain Macha (Navan Fort), the traditional capital of
Ulster, close to Armagh. For memory, let us remind of the fact that it is this people who left us
the legend of Cuchulain. During the time which followed, their descendants were known under
the name of Dál Fiatach, and were driven back to the east part of county Down.
Múscraige and Osraige were the former native-born peoples of North-East Munster.Darini
and Robogdii (or Reidodioi) are two tribes of which territory was located in the county of
Antrim as well as in the north of county Down. They were probably the ancestors of the Dal
Riata or Dál Riada of History, who colonized Scotland in the fifth century of our era. These
occupiers of the Dal Riada in the West of Antrim and of the Dal Fiatach in the East of Ulster
were therefore some Hibernians or Erainn. And it is only later that they were endowed Gaelic
ancestors or were regarded as Gaels, i.e., some members of the last wave of Celtic
invaders.The Ebdani are a tribe of the east coast whose name appears in the form Eblani in
Ptolemy. Their capital, that Ptolemy calls Eblana, was often but wrongly, considered as being
Dublin (because of the similarity of the two names).
Lastly, in the life of St Greallan, patron saint of the Ui Maine, Fir Bolg Gauls are regarded as
being the native-born people of Connaught.
Norman Mongan seems to think that many of these Fir Bolg Gauls would have remained for a
long time as vassal tribes. Most part of the Irish place names containing the terms mong,
muin, maion, maine, managh, monach, manach, mannog, would be vestiges of their
presence.
According to some specialists, the P-Celtic language of the Hibernians or Erainn, would be
the Iarmbérla language mentioned by the tract known as Auraicept Na nÉces or the Iarnbélre
mentioned in the glossary of Cormac (Sanas Cormaic) under the name of Iarnnbêlrae,
Iarnbêlrae, or Iarmbêrla.According to T.F. O'Rahilly, the term would come from *Érn-bélre,
which would mean language of Erainn.Cormac gives us two words in this language: ond
(stone) and fern (good).
These Belgians brought much to their adopted country and in particular in the artistic field:
swords, torcs, and vessels identical to those of the Continent; but their technical superiority
hardly made the antiquated way of life of the natives, evolving. They built very few hill forts in
Ireland, whereas those were very numerous in Great Britain or on the Continent under the
name of oppidum justly.They adopted the indigenous housing, on the other hand: some
rudimentary huts out of stones, in the shape of circular hives, built without mortar.
Circa - 300 Ireland was again subject to another arrival of speakers having a P-Celtic
language. We can distinguish three names in this invasion, but it is impossible to know if it is
three names different from the same tribe, or three groups bound by very close links. Their
names, such as they appear in the written documents, are Laigin, Domnainn and Gailioin.
According to their own traditions, they came from Armorica or from Normandy. They would
have landed in the South-east of the country and would have taken it from Erainn. Then the
border between Ulster and Leinster became the Liffey River. The modern name of the
province, Leinster (Irish Laighin), preserves the memory of these peoples, even if Leinster
had then a surface notably more reduced than that of Leinster of today.Domnainn were
apparently a branch of the Dumnonii, a Celtic people living Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall)
according to the classic authors. Another branch of Dumnonii settled besides in Scotland,
where they founded Dumbarton, and the kingdom known later under the name of Strathclyde.
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These two invasions probably occurred about the same time as the invasion of Ireland by
Laginians.This Laginian invasion had only few consequences in Ulster or in Munster, but we
may not say the same thing of the Connaught from where they would have pushed back the
Fir Bolg Gauls. The remains of many stones fortifications built by the latter to defend
themselves against Laginian attacks are still visible in this area. Only some generations were
necessary so that the tribes of Laigin settle firmly in Connaught or in County Sligo. O'Hara,
O'Gara, and others, would be their descendants. They remained nevertheless more strongly
settled in the south-east of Leinster, where they formed the dominant power until historical
times. They seem to have had less influence in Munster and in Ulster, what tends to show
that their conquest was limited in fact to Leinster and Connaught.Another branch of their
people was the Gailioin (or Gailenga) settled in the north of Dublin and County Meath. The
Erainn tribes of this province were often overcome there, by them, during the third century.
The decisive battle took place in County Sligo at Mag Tured. A Laginian king (perhaps going
by the name of Cairpre) crushed Erainn in this place and drove out them of Connaught.
T.F. O'Rahilly thinks that this first battle of the Plain of the standing stones or mounds is a
historical battle having really taken place, but not between Fir Bolg Gauls and Tuatha Dé
Danann, between Fir Bolg Erainn and Laginians.SUCH IS NOT OUR POINT OF VIEW!
ACCORDING TO US THIS BATTLE IS PURELY MYTHICAL AND IN NO WAY
HISTORICAL.Gann and Sengann are also the names given, in the legend, to Fomoire or
Andernas having lived during the time of the Nemedians then having been overcome by
them, and “son of Dela” is also the precision describing a Fomoire named Morc, so? Would
there be by accident mix-up between the gigantic anguipedic wyverns (called Andernas on
the Continent, Fomor in Gaelic) and the historical Fir Bolg Gauls???In any event, we have
some difficulties to imagine Fir Bolg Gauls or other people building Dun Aengus and Dun
Conor in the Aran Islands, or Dun Bhaloir on the island of Tory.
Division in four provinces of Ireland goes back, on the other hand, probably at that time.
Erainn continued to dominate Ulster as well as Munster, and the Lagin with their allies
became the dominant power in Leinster and Connaught. According to the tradition, the lands
of these four provinces met in the center of the country, marked by the hill of Uisneach
(between Mullingar and Athlone, in County Westmeath), a name meaning something like
“navel, omphalos or cornerstone.” The territory located immediately around this hill was called
Medion, what means “middle,” and it was there the origin of the name of County Meath.Julius
Caesar reports that the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) met each year in a sacred
place in the center of the country to celebrate there various rituals (De Bello Gallico VI, 13).
The Irish tradition reports us the same thing, the Mórdáil Uisnig took place each year on the
hill of Uisneach, on the day of Beltene, on May 1st.
The history of the site of Dun Ailinne shows that. The first occupation was very seriously
affected by a later building of the Iron Age: a wood palisade (“white” phase) approximately 22
m in diameter.Sometime later, it was demolished to make way for a construction much more
ambitious (the “rose“ phase) which was not only larger (36 m diameter approximately); but
which also presented an annex on its southern part and a very elaborate entrance analog to
that of the temple of Gournay-sur-Aronde in France: a true gate.This structure of the “rose”
phase was dismantled, in turn to still make way for the construction of the larger “mauve”
phase “(42 m diameter approximately) and with a different plan. Two concentric foundation
trenches make it possible to think of a platform between two walls, but the inside is not an
open space as it was the case in the “rose” phase. In the middle of the structure of the
“mauve“ phase was a circular building, which not only was built with timbers higher than its
small size (6 m diameter approximately) required; but which, moreover, was surrounded by a
circle of additional timbers. We can deduce from these characteristics that this building was
exceptionally high compared to its small surface on the ground (a tower?) and that it was
strengthened by outside flying buttress. In the space between this central tower and the
outside palisade wall, was set up a circle of twenty-nine very large timbers, having each one a
diameter of approximately 0,50 m.The newcomers behind the “white“ phase to begin, in the
third century before our era, and then of the “rose“ phase in the second century, therefore
brought into Ireland, not only new religious designs (particularly some shrines); but also some
funerary practices unknown in the area, and which show beliefs in hereafter different.The
druidic institution in Ireland also goes back consequently at least at the end of the Bronze Age
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or of the first iron ages (i.e., around - 800 before our era).As it is proven that there have
always been, since, high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) among Irish Celts, this
means therefore; unlike what the French Jean-Louis Brunaux writes in his nevertheless
excellent book about the religions; that this institution dates back at least to the eighth
century before our era.These last comers will be gradually assimilated by the mass of Q
Celtic-speaking people having been previous to them, they will be little by little Goidelized or
Gaelized.It is nevertheless probable that they succeeded in thoroughly influencing the
shamanism or the proto-druidism of their predecessors in this island, before their
disappearance.The last Celtic wave having contributed to giving Ireland the face that we know
to her is the Gaelic settlement, around 150 before our era.The greatest mystery reigns on it,
what the legend reports us about the origin of Milesians being invented, particularly their
Spanish origins. The legends about the arrival of the sons of Mile, ancestors of Gaels, do not
have any credible historical base.But what is certain, on the other hand, it is the existence
ever since then of Irishmen speaking a Q-Celtic language.
Celtic language forms a branch of the family of Indo-European languages, on the same basis
for example as Latin, Greek, Sanskrit.... or Slovenian.Celts of Gaul and of Great Britain spoke
the P-Celtic language, ancestor of the Welsh (and of the Breton language on the Continent).
Without going too much into linguistic details, the expressions “Q-Celtic“ and “P-Celtic“ come
from the fact that the word for horse was therefore “epos“ in “p” Celtic, but on the other hand
“equos” in “q” Celtic (what produced “ech“, then modern Irish “each“).Current Irish, called
Gaelic (first official language of the Irish Republic before English, normal), is derived from the
“q” Celtic dialect.Only one possible explanation. There was no invasion, but a slow increase
of original peoples who have, by the way, completed to Celtize themselves, what gave Gaels.
Gaels of Ireland are natives having evolved then having ended up taking again the power.In
fact, the same linguistic phenomenon as that which produced the Germanic languages on the
Continent: the adaptation to their way of pronouncing and thinking, by tall blond-haired
dolichocephalic non-Aryans, of an Indo-European language, the Lusatian, as Sigmund Feist
thought to explain the innovations of the Germanic languages in relation to the common
features of the various Indo-European languages (conjugations, place of the verb in the
sentence, tonic accent, consonantal mutations, etc.). The first Germanic languages therefore
would have been some creoles of Afrikaans type.In Ireland, at least, what is certain it is that
the Gaelophone peopling, which was perhaps only a Reconquista, succeeded in driving back
the Laginians.
One of the groups of Gaels in question was the Eóganachta and their chief a certain Mogh (or
Mug) Nuadat. The Eóganachta would have landed at the place called Inber Scene (the
Kenmare River in the South-west).The very names of Eóganacht and Mug Nuadat,
undoubtedly adopted after their arrival, lead to the conclusion that initially they began by
keeping very good relationships with the Erainn (some allies??) ; since these two names
seem to come from those of two of their deities.Southerner Gaels did not have a fixed capital
at the beginning and went on the contrary from an area to the other before being fixed at
Cashel. They stretched over then beyond the Shannon River and gave their name to the
province of Connaught.Gaels of the Boyne Estuary (thanks to a king named Tuathal
Techtmar) succeeded in pushing back Laginians or Laigin into north of Leinster and
establishing their suzerainty over Tara.But the majority of the pre-Gaelic tribes remained on
the spot and formed the base of the future Irish society, ruled by Gaels much fewer, although
much more powerful.We find in the works of certain poets that the Gaelic tribes, the Fir Bolg
Gallic peoples and the Laigin, have for a long time lived together that there were mixed
marriages.In the introduction of his book, entitled “Leabhar I Eadhra” Lambert McKenna
points out that the filidh, who were also genealogists, evoke the existence of two kinds of
ruling families in primitive Ireland. First, families of Gael conquerors who were the dominant
power. The seconds, the great families of the other “races“ like Laginians or Fir Bolg Gauls,
who, although reduced to the state of the vassals, nevertheless had kept the right to remain
lords of their peoples. Specialists ascribed to these rich and influential men relationship
associating them to the noblest Gaelic families.The annalists of the time reveal us that Fir
Bolg Gauls survived a very long time as distinct tribes. In Connaught there were for example
the Ui Maine, Conmhaicne, Ui Fiachra and Ui Briuin. In Leinster there were the Ui Failige, Ui
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Bairrche and Ui Enechglaiss. In Ulster and in Munster, many tribes were also of Fir Bolg
Gaulish origin. And there also these tribes lived a long time together with their Gael
conquerors. Inside the country they could keep their lands in exchange for various services of
military or warlike type, in short in becoming vassals of Gaelic suzerains. The Laginian tribes
(Gailing) so helped Gaels to conquer Connaught and got many fiefs in County Mayo: the
barony of Gallen for example preserved their name.The Connaught, or far west of Ireland,
located between the river Shannon and the Atlantic Ocean, was known under the name
coiced Ol nEcmacht before the seventh century; and it was peopled with vassal tribes or
peoples belonging to one or the other of the ethnic groups having been previous to the Gaels;
but forming nevertheless a portion, in a way or in another, of the Celtic great family.Among
these pre-Gaelic tribes of Connaught, there was the Gregraige, a Fir Bolg Gaulish tribe, which
occupied most of the west of County Sligo, between Loch Gara and Ox mountains. There
were also in the same area the Gailenga and the Luigne of whom the O'Hara and O’Gara.
The Ciarrage or “black” tribes occupied most of the North-West of the county of Roscommon
and looked to have been the first lords of Airtech, current barony of Frenchpark.It is supposed
that their capital was at Baslic near Castlerea. The Calraige, another important pre-Gaelic
tribe, had lands in the counties Sligo and Mayo, as well as in North of county Roscommon.
They were perhaps the rulers of Moylurg before being absorbed by the Sil Murray then the
MacDermot.Another powerful federation of tribes was the Ui Maine (O'Kelly) whose territory
included vast zones of what is today the South of County Roscommon, Galway as well as
North of County Clare. According to O'Rahilly, the Ui Maine were pre-Gaelic Celts to whom
one ascribed later, and in a somewhat fictitious way, a Milesian descent, through Maine Mor,
son of Eochu…O'Rahilly specifies that they were vassals (paying tribute) of the Gael kings of
Connaught. Among Ui Maine there were particularly the Sogain, a tribe of Cruthin or Picts and
the Dal naDruithne, another pre-Gaelic Celtic tribe.The continual arrival in Connaught, of
newcomers, and the mixing which followed, sometimes make difficult the determination of the
ethnic memberships. Certain tribes were completely vassalized, but others succeeded in
keeping some independence and in coexisting for a long time with the Gael conquerors.As
old annals have it, Connaught was run in the first century before our era by a king whose
name was Eochaidh Feidlech. According to the legend, it is him who built the large fortified
castle located at Rathcroghan, the fortress of the kings of Connaught. One of his
descendants, Fearadach, ruled there in year 75. The son of Fearadach, Fiacha, was
assassinated in Magh Cru at the time of one revolt of the Aitheach Tuatha or Attacotti, who
were some pre-Gaelic peoples. They attracted the king in a trap, and he and his men were
massacred until the last one. But Attacotti in turn were overcome by the great warrior who
was Tuathal Teachtmhar, founder of the kingdom of Meath, and grandfather of the famous
Conn of the hundred battles; the first true king of the kings of Ireland. Tuathal Teachtmhar
came from Scotland and the tradition claims that he was the son of a previous king of the
kings, having been overthrown by a rebellion of the aforesaid Aitheach Tuatha. It would thus
have been the victorious return of an exiled one come to take the throne of his father. There
are nevertheless many reasons to bet that it was not the case, that this filiation with a
previous high king or Ireland is an invention, and that Tuathal Teachtmhar was quite simply a
lucky war leader, a foreigner (non-Irish), called Teutovalos, who will have succeeded in
landing into this country and being settled in it.
The Gaelic conquest of Ulster.
The tribe of Ulaid speaking a P-Celtic language still held Emain at the beginning of the fourth
century, their royal dynasty claimed to go back to the legendary Fir Bolg Gallic king called
Rudraige son of Dela, and still disputed supremacy over the country, to the Gael clans settled
in the center. Ptolemy’s map, drawn up about the year 150 from older sources, names them
Voluntii. At their peak, it seems that they were rulers of what is now the county Monaghan,
county Armagh, county Down, county Antrim and most of the County Louth.The center of the
province was held by the Airgialla, a little structured confederation of tribes of Cruithin origin,
which was a vassal of the Ulaid. Ptolemy’s map mentions two other tribes more in the west,
Vennikinii in county Donegal and Erpitiani along lower and upper Lough Erne. These two
tribes were probably vassal of the Ulaid.The Gaelic conquest of Ulster was completed by
three of the sons of Niall, Conall Gulban, Eógan and Énda, who were rewarded by three sub-
kingdoms in the West of the province.According to O'Rahilly therefore, and in short, the
ousting of the Belgians and Laginians from Ireland was not completed yet at the beginning of
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the fifth century since the famous Ulaid or Voluntii ruled what remained of Ulster, as liege
lords of various vassal princes, until towards year 425.
All these successive waves of immigration Celtized completely Ireland. The substrate formed
by the oldest comers, Celtized proto-Celts, led to some distinctive identities compared to the
great pan-Celtic community (Litavia, Celticum under the hand of Livy). They were the
“Goidels,” i.e., the “rough ones,” to take as a compliment similar to that of “Spartan” or in the
pejorative senses of “savage,” according to membership or not to this group.Therefore not a
last wave of invaders landing on the island then eliminating all the others, but a kind of
Reconquista of the Gaelic people, a slow increase of the Gaelic-speaking people , pushing
back and assimilating little by little GaiIeoin, Bolg, Laginians and other Dumnonians. While
letting them a long time remain in many places, particularly in Ulster (hence the epic of
Cuchulain and many other elements of the mythological corpus. Setanta called the Hound of
Culann is indeed in no way an Irishman. He never considers himself as an Irishman, but
spends his time fighting them).What is certain in any event, it is there existed at the historical
time in Ireland, at least three tribes incontestably speaking a P-Celtic language.Briganti
(counties Waterford and Wexford). Perhaps a section of insular Brigantes of [Great] Britain
(Wales), having fled their territory of origin occupied by the Romans. Archeological
excavations in these areas found typical objects.Menapians (County Wicklow). People of
East Ireland, and most probably a section of the Menapians of Belgium, having migrated to
Ireland.Corionototae or Coriondi (north of County Wexford). We know only a few things about
this people, it is quoted by Ptolemy. It is perhaps a section of Corionototae which would have
migrated from [Great] Britain towards Ireland. Settled at the origin in the Leinster, it is likely
that it is the “Coraind” we find later in County Sligo.What is certain, moreover, it is that in the
fourth century of our era, Ireland was entirely Gaelized or Goidelized, except for Ulster, and
that it was politically divided into four or in five kingdoms/provinces.Ulster was still ruled by
tribes of Erainn. The central territory or Meath with Tara was inhabited by Gaelic tribes.
Leinster was held by Gaelized tribes, vassal of the king of Tara. Munster was in the hands of
Gaelic tribes. Connaught was subjected to Gaelic tribes.
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APPENDIX No. 5.
HYPERBOREA ACCORDING TO THE GREEKS.
Our old Master Henry Lizeray also tackled the question in his work entitled “the national
traditions rediscovered” published in 1892 in Paris. Unfortunately to immediately link it with
Atlantis, which hardly facilitates things, even if his localization has nothing shocking for
geographical science. Moreover see below.
Dionysius of Miletus makes us know the Genesis of the Westerners, much truer than that
of the Easterners. It is enough to release the sense of the personifications and of the myths
appropriate to primitive intelligence ...... It results from the word of Apollodorus that Atlas and
the Hesperides were located beyond Boreas. Boreas means North and also the Celtic land of
which he was the first king. The inhabitants of Atlantis are therefore simply the residents of
the Atlantic Ocean, i.e., the Celts living under the northern hemisphere constellation known as
Ursa ”….
But the best summarized question is still that of the universal dictionary of History and
Geography, published first once in 1842 (p. 864).
HYPERBOREAN. i.e., beyond Boreas. The name given by the Greeks to Northern peoples
and countries. They placed initially the country of the Hyperboreans north of Thrace, then it
was moved back beyond the Ripean or Rhipean Mountains between the Alps and Ural. They
imagined that beyond these mountains a people beloved by the gods lived, who practiced all
the virtues, who lived without work and unrest, sheltered from the breath of Boreas, in a
climate of an unchanging mildness.We notice in any case singular relationship between the
worships of Apollo or Diana, and the traditions spread about Hyperboreans.Two thousand two
hundred years before, Herodotus (- 484 - 420) had already somewhat stigmatized the soft
focus of Greek legends concerning the Hyperboreans, and the vagueness of the word. He
pointed ut besides there were also in the same way some “hypernotians” i.e., some hyper
southerners).In addition to Herodotus and Diodorus, various Greek authors also evoked (in
prose or in poetry) these huperboreioi or huperboreoi: Aristotle, Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
Aeschylus, Hecataeus of Abdera, Lucian, Pausanias, Pindar, and Ptolemy.Some names of
characters resulting from this people emerge from all that: the maidens Akhaiia, Arge,
Hyperoche, Laodike and Opis, the midwife Eileithyia (Ilithyia) and especially the famous
Olenus and Abarix.
Olenus (Ailinus, Linus, Olen).Evoked by Herodotus, Pausanias, Callimachus of Cyrene and
Alexander Polyhistor.A semi-mythical musician considered as an Hyperborean directly come
from Hyperborea, or as an Hyperborean come in Delos after being passed through Lycia.He
composed some anthems which were sung in the solemn festivals of Delos and Delphi. What
earned him to be regarded as a great pontiff in these places.Pausanias knew of him some
anthems to Eileithyia (mother of Eros and a female obstetrician of Leto), to Hera, Akhaiia (a
maiden of Delos also come from Hyperborea) and finally to Boeo, a prophetess come with the
other Hyperboreans to settle in Delphi according to some authors. The druid Olen is therefore
the first prophet of Abellio/Apollo known over there, and he is also supposed to have been the
inventor of the hexameter, at least as oracular expression devoted to the god-or-demon
Apollo/Abellio.The mention of his arrival in the Greek Archipelago coming from Lycia (a region
of Anatolia) is in no way contradictory. Olenus can have been very well a wandering
hyperborean bard or druid, having begun by crossing Anatolia.Unless even this mention of
Lycia is only a mix-up more with the name of Lug. Olen therefore would have been
nicknamed “Lugian.” Editor’s note. The Celtic language probably knew the personal name
Olenus according to the British place name Olenacon = “Olenus’s estate,” currently Ilkley.
Tacitus also mentioned a character named Olennius in Germania, but this Latinization in us
can as well concern a Germanic name in - az than a Celtic name in - os.
Abarix/Abaris.Evoked by Herodotus, Lycurgus, Pindar, Plato, Heraclides, Hecataeus, Plutarch
and Apollonius among Greeks.Legendary character who is said coming from hyperborean
regions. He was a priest of Apollo/Abellio at the same time theologian and miracle worker.
They are the Greek mystic men of the sixth and fifth centuries before our era who most
celebrated his fame when it was not his very existence. It is not known when he lived exactly:
the ones made him a contemporary of Orpheus (legendary character too therefore impossible
to date), others a contemporary of Pythagoras (- 570 - 480). Pindar, too, placed him at the
time of Croesus, who ruled from - 560 to - 545, therefore at the same time; others still placed
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him in a vague but rather former time.Herodotus speaks about him in connection with Apollo
at Delphi. Abarix would have had with him a very mysterious arrow (that of the god-or-
demon?) which would have enabled him to travel in the whole world without needing to eat.It
is immediately thought of the mysterious Irish magic branches of Lug or of other similar God-
or-demons, enabling their lucky owners to be constantly filled up, without needing to eat.
According to others, it is him who would have been carried by this arrow, with which he went
through the airs. Plato mentions Abarix as the author of magic formulas. Knowing how to
predict, he was also very skillful in medicine, so that he liberated several peoples of Greece
from the pestilences which afflicted them.Lycurgus (fragment 85 B1) shows him associated
with the Attic worship of Apollo: in a time of endemic plague (loimos, what should be read
perhaps limos = famine), Abarix would have offered to the town of Athens a great expiatory
sacrifice (Proerosia).The first great distributor having spread the legend of Abarix was
Heraclides Ponticus; his dialog on Abarix was, according to Plutarch, a much appreciated
reading of youth.We can wonder whether his account of the ride of Abarix on the arrow of the
god-or-demon, does not form the most archaic version of the legend of Abarix that of
Herodotus being already more critical. However that may be, Hecataeus used him also later
for his hyperborean novel, and neo-Pythagoreans held him for a great teacher precursory of
Pythagoras.In Greek, the name of Abaris was declined in two ways. Either with a genitive
Abaridos, which would then make think of a “barbarian” name of the kind * Abarids, or in
Ionian mode Abarios (therefore parallel to the Celtic genitives of -is male names) and with an
accusative Abarin, just like in Celtic language.Here the passage of Herodotus which mentions
the question (book IV, chapter XXXIII-XXXVI).
Thus they say that these sacred offerings come to Delos; but at first, they say, the
Hyperboreans sent two maidens bearing the sacred offerings, whose names, say the Delians,
were Hyperoche and Laodike. And with them for their protection the Hyperboreans sent five
men of their nation to attend them, those namely who are now called Perphereës and have
great honors paid to them in Delos. Since, however, the Hyperboreans found that those who
were sent away did not return, they were troubled to think that it would always befall them to
send out and not to receive back; so they bore the offerings to the borders of their land bound
up in wheat straw, and laid a charge upon their neighbors, bidding them send these forward
from themselves to another nation. These things then, they say, come to Delos being thus
sent forward; and I know of my own knowledge that a thing is done which has resemblance to
these offerings, namely that the women of Thrace and Paionia, when they sacrifice to Artemis
"the Queen," do not make their offerings without wheat straw.These I know do as I have said;
for those maidens from the Hyperboreans, who died in Delos: both the girls and the boys of
the Delians cut off their hair. The former before marriage cut off a lock and having reeled it
round a spindle lay it upon the tomb (now the tomb is on the left hand as one goes into the
temple of Artemis, and over it grows an olive tree), and all the boys of the Delians wind some
of their hair about a green shoot of some tree, and they also place it upon the tomb.The
maidens, I say, have this honor paid them by the dwellers in Delos: and the same people say
that Arge and Opis also, being maidens, came to Delos, passing from the Hyperboreans by
the same nations which have been mentioned, even before Hyperoche and Laodike. These
last, they say, came bearing for Eileithuia the tribute which they had laid upon themselves for
the speedy birth; but Arge and Opis came with the deities themselves, and other honors have
been assigned to them by the people of Delos: for the women, they say, collect for them,
naming them by their names in the hymn which Olen, a man of Lykia (coming from the behalf
of Lug??) composed in their honor; and both the natives of the other islands and the Ionians
have learned from them to sing hymns naming Opis and Arge and collecting. Now this Olen
came from Lukia (cf. Lug??) and also composed the other ancient hymns which are sung in
Delos. And, moreover, they say that when the thighs of the victim are consumed upon the
altar, the ashes of them are used to cast upon the grave of Opis and Arge. Now their grave is
behind the temple of Artemis, turned towards the East, close to the banqueting hall of the
Keïeans.Let this suffice which has been said of the Hyperboreans; for the tale of Abaris, who
is reported to have been a Hyperborean, I do not tell, namely how he carried the arrow about
all over the earth, eating no food. If, however, there are any Hyperboreans, it follows that
there are also Hypernotians” (i.e., of far south. Editor’s note).
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In connection with this mysterious and incredible story of an arrow, here another evocation of
this ancient legend. Apollo, after having slaughtered the Cyclops, would have hidden the
arrow he used in the large round temple that he had among the Hyperboreans (Stonehenge
in England? Editor’s note). The hyperborean high priest called Abarix “would have then
traveled all over the Earth on this arrow and this same arrow would have flown away in the
clouds to form the Sagittarius constellation.”Here therefore all that we currently know about
the druids of Lug called Olenus and Abarix.
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APPENDIX No. 6.
HYPERBOREA AND NORTHERN ORIGIN OF THE TRADITIONS
ACCORDING TO PAUL LE COUR (Atlantis).
In 1890, E. - F. Berlioux published a work entitled: in search of the nation and of the city of the
Hyperboreans. I will restrict myself to point out that he made Hyperborea the northern Celtis,
and that he sees in Hyperboreans the predecessors of the druids and of the bards.Very often,
we referred here at the origin of the traditions and of the civilization which comes from it.The
Ancients gave this region the name of Hyperborea. It is in this latitude that would have been
born the idea of the death of the god sun (or winter solstice) and of his resurrection at the end
of three days. We can thus follow the descent of mankind towards southernmost regions, as
the northern regions get colder.
Hyperborea was celebrated by the storytellers, sung by the poets and the musicians; it is the
kingdom of Thule, Ultima Thule. The Hindu traditions too, make the Aryan civilization go back
to the polar and western regions; one of them mentions the White Island, where the sages
formerly went to be taught. This White Island was considered tantamount to England, from
which the ancient name, Albio, comes from albus, white, because of its white cliffs, but in
reality it is necessary for us to look at more north.In his library devoted to mythology (book II,
chapter V, section 11), Apollodorus writes that the golden apples taken off by Hercules were
in the Atlantis of the Hyperboreans, not in Libya. And according to Pomponius Mela, Orpheus
himself was a hyperborean priest, a priest of the sun, because the god-or-demon of
Hyperborea in that time was Apollo/Abellio, nicknamed the Hyperborean one.
Hecataeus & some others said that beyond & in the Ocean in the direction of the North,
there was an island as large as Sicily where Hyperboreans lived. So named because it was
believed they were located beyond the north wind. The soil of the island is excellent; it
provides two harvests a year. It is, they say, the birthplace of Latona, & they revere
particularly Apollo his son. They are all priests of this god & they unceasingly sing anthems in
his honor. His superb temple of round shape & still filled with rich offerings is in a sacred
wood in the middle of the island; the very town is devoted to this god. The Hyperboreans
speak a particular language. They love the Greeks, especially those of Athens & Delos, which
formerly came among them & left there offerings covered with Greek inscriptions. They add
on their side that Abarix came formerly to Greece in order to renew the old alliance of
Hyperboreans with Delians. They believe that Apollo goes down on their island every
nineteen years 1), what matches the revolution of a great year. This nineteenth year of the
Metonic cycle is celebrated by the Hyperboreans since the spring equinox until the rising of
the Pleiades & they spend this time in joy & feasts. Royal & priestly dignity in this island
belongs to the Boreads, descendants of Boreas, whose succession was still not stopped… 2)
.He saw bronze tables that Opis & Hecaërge had brought from hyperborean countries, in
which a very important knowledge has been engraved , he learned that when the soul is
separated from its body, it goes away to an unknown place… Those whom a good genius [a
guardian angel would say Christians and Muslims] has well led, come to inhabit the residence
of the righteous persons, where time passes in a happy abundance… there neither the winter,
nor the summer is known….Poets recite here their lines of verse, musicians make their songs
heard & these fortunate shadows breathe the peace & the serenity of a soft & immortal life….l
regard these first ideas as the work & the benefit of the Hyperboreans, because the Greeks
said it & that with all kinds of reasons to contradict this fact, they would have no reason to put
it forward if it had not been real. I believe these ideas are initial & ancient, because the
Hyperboreans who established in Greece the worship of Apollo & who particularly founded
the temple of Delos, are also those who had brought these hyperborean tablets from north.
Opis & Arge are quoted to have devoted these tables & to have made the first offerings to
Delos *. We cannot therefore give to these ideas about afterlife a more recent date only that
of the institution of the worship of Apollo fifteen or sixteen centuries before our era.” (Jean-
Sylvain Bailly. Essay on the fables and their history. Volume 2).
The old traditions of Sweden, of Greece, and even of India, therefore locate in the northern
regions a people who had high religious doctrines, which are made the starting point of the
original tradition.In Greece, as we have just seen , the Hyperboreans were depicted as a
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people living in a country with mild and fertile climate; a people endowed with a great piety,
and with very pure morals. The year comprised a six-month night and a six-month day. Could
it be to this origin that the legend of Proserpina spending six months on earth and six months
in the kingdom of shadows would go back?
Ogygia was, it is said, an island located in the west of England; close to this island &
towards the summer sunset there is another island where people in the country say that
Saturn is held prisoner by Jupiter & is kept by the giants Ogyges & Briareus. Saturn holds his
court in it, in the middle of those who were his friends during his life. These courtiers of Pluto
are called demons, but the Ancients believed these demons were the soul/minds of the men
of the golden century. This island is in a sea which is called Saturn” **(Jean-Sylvain Bailly.
Essay on the fables and their history. Volume 2).
According to this author, Ogygia Island, Plato’s Atlantis, Hyperborea but also Spitsbergen, are
the same thing, and this author thinks that the flood of Ogyges was the memory of the
submersion of Ogygia Island formerly. It seems therefore that we glimpse as through a
distorting lens what is relating to the most ancient traditions of prehistoric Mankind, and once
more we see that legend often contains elements of History.It would therefore be admitted
that Homo sapiens occupied this area, whereas the climate made it possible the vegetable
and animal life to open out there and that it is the last glaciation which made him go down
towards the 45e degree. i.e., halfway between the pole and the equator, where we find the
man of Cro-Magnon (Paul Le Cour in Atlantis No. 341.)
* Plato. In Axiocho. Herodotus book IV, chapter XXXV.
** Cf. Plutarch. De facie in orbe Lunae § 33. The attribution to Saturn of this island is without
any doubt due to a mix-up. The sea surrounding it was called Cronion Mori in Celtic language,
i.e., in a way “icy sea,” but the Greek travelers arrived in these areas believed that this word
(“Cronion”) was a name meaning “of Kronos” (Kronion); from the name of a deity later
considered tantamount to Saturn by Latin people. End of the editor’s note.
1) This periodic return refers to the astronomical period called Metonic cycle, what would
indicate already developed astronomical knowledge. Diodorus of Sicily also writes that,
among the Hyperboreans, the moon appears very close and that people see clearly in it some
mountains, what would imply, against any likelihood, that telescopes existed there already
(sic).
2) Without going as far as mistaking him purely and simply for the “Boreas” in question, a
Greek deification of North Wind, we can nevertheless wonder whether there were not there
either, another Greek-Latin confusion; due to the first Greek travelers having reached the
area. See editor’s note above: the mix-up between the Celtic “Cronion” = “icy” and the Greek
word “Kronion” meaning “of Kronos”.
Our comment. Our comment. Our comment. Our comment. Our comment. Our comment. Our
comment. Our comment.
This text exactly as the following one contains at the same time serious data and also
resumptions for a long time out-of-date of hare-brained ideas. It's a great pity that the readers
of Atlantis could not have sorted them with some editor’s notes wisely added here and there
to warn non-informed readers.
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APPENDIX No. 7.
HYPERBOREA AND ARYANS
ACCORDING TO SERGE HUTIN.
A Hindu philosopher of the 19th century, Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) some time ago
published a curious book based on Avesta and Veda where he endeavored to gather all the
evidence of an Arctic origin of Aryans having civilized India.
According to very old Sanskrit traditions indeed, it is in the neighborhood of our north pole that
the very first inhabited continent would have appeared (sic). It would have collapsed while
leaving important vestiges in the areas located on the periphery of the Arctic Ocean. This
brutal inversion of climate would be explained by a displacement of the earth axis which,
itself, would have caused the change of position of the two poles. It is easily imagined that
such an upheaval, of course, started a gigantic tidal wave.Another cataclysm of which the
direct links with the first one would deserve thorough scientific research besides: that of the
glaciation, or rather of glaciations, because several followed one another on our planet.It is
obvious that the thawing of the frozen liquid enormous masses of the poles, just as certain
glaciers, was a very fast phenomenon. This sudden thawing caused, of course, the
swallowing up of considerable territories, but this initial Hyperborea was not completely
submerged. Various circumpolar areas, Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, Spitsbergen, Jan Mayen
Island, Iceland, etc., can be regarded as its vestiges. And in the ancient myths, the area of
Far North is readily regarded as the very first civilizing center of mankind.Here what observed
on this subject the French Rene Guenon (the King of the World). “It is always an area which,
like the Heaven on Earth, became inaccessible to ordinary mankind, and which is located
beyond reach of all cataclysms which wreak havoc the human world at the end of certain
cyclic periods. This area is truly the “supreme region“. Moreover, according to certain Vedic
and Avestan texts, its situation originally would have been polar, even in the literal sense of
the word; and no matter what it can be about its localization through the various phases of the
history of earthly Mankind; it remains still polar in the symbolic meaning of the world. Since it
represents the fixed axis around which the revolution of all things is performed“. Even after
the last glaciation, and we enter then into the time of classical Antiquity, the Greeks will be still
in ongoing contact with highly advanced men of the white race, living in arctic regions. Hadn't
had Pythagoras as a master a sage come - revealing detail - from a country where an
uninterrupted day prevailed during half of the year?At the time of the Roman empire, we find
then, as we have just seen higher, the curious account of the historian and moralist Plutarch,
in his tract entitled “On the face in the Moon's“. In it he described Ogygia Island located at a
run of five days off [Great] Britain when you sail westward. Plutarch still speaks about three
islands more in the west, where during a month in summer, the nights last hardly an hour. It is
in one of these vast islands, that of Cronos (sic! At least it is so that Plutarch calls it, it is
probably a druidic god-or-demon) just as in Ogygia Island, that other very civilized men lived,
from Aryan stock like the Hellenes. Plutarch owed this precise information to his son-in-law
Lamprias, who had got them from a person by the name Sylla. This one held them from a
foreigner met in Carthage. This character precisely arrived from the mysterious island of
Cronos or Saturn (or rather of the Celtic god-or-demon likely to be the subject of such a
comparison. See editor’s note above). As a priest of this god-or-demon, he had remained
there throughout thirty years; in Carthage he had enjoyed fame for having discovered a whole
set of sacred parchments, exposed at the time of the destruction of the city, by an
earthquake. We cannot refuse to the ancient sailors to have explored the Northern and even
Arctic seas; just as we cannot deny the existence of trades between Hellenes then the
Romans and some mysterious peoples, but of Aryan race also, Cimmerians, Hyperboreans,
who still occupied some remote northern areas, close to the polar circle.Here some pertinent
remarks made by Rene Guenon (the King of the World).The Island of the Four Masters… this
denomination, in the same way, moreover, as that of Green Island (Erin) applied before to
another land much more northern, now unknown, perhaps disappeared, Ogygia or rather
Thule; which was one of the main spiritual centers, if not even the supreme center of a certain
period.In Hindu mythology, it is referred to the “white island” located in the remote boreal
areas, and considered as the “Earth of the Living “ as the “abode of the Blessed“.But what
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could well be the former island of Thule? It seems to be a designation sometimes applying to
the former Hyperborea as a whole, sometimes to a rather important island and which would
have survived the swallowing up of the initial continent.The island of the Four Masters could
be located in various northern areas. Rene Guenon, still in his book entitled the King of the
World, thinks that “each one of these areas was, in a more or less remote time, the seat of a
spiritual power which was like as an emanation of that of the primordial Tula “.The chthonic
terrifying cataclysms , about which we spoke higher, could have caused the sinking of one or
two of these islands, these very islands that St Brendan and other Irish sailors thought of
having found again or discovered. And that some sailors, thereafter, also believed to have
seen again, until the middle of the modern period
(Serge Hutin. Alien races and fantastic civilizations).
Our comment.
1) The islands seen by Brendan and the other sailors in question, have perhaps nothing to do
with the “hyperborean” context. Too much in the west!
2) Guenon tried an impossible mixture between Tula, former Toltec capital, and Thule.
Because we could not admit a relationship connection between a civilization of pre-Columbian
Mexico (non-previous to the tenth century of our era, moreover) and Thule; known by Pytheas
thirteen or fourteen centuries earlier approximately, North-West of the cradle of the Celts.This
type of mistake, in the name of an alleged Perennial Tradition, harmed much besides Guenon
and his credibility in his time.
3) Aryan race? As each one knows it now, there was never Aryan race, but an Indo-European
culture comprising a pool of traditions going back to the beginning of prehistoric time (the
Jamna culture around the Black Sea); and belonging to a rather coherent linguistic group, in
spite of the diverging evolutions and of the various incorporations of non-Indo-European
elements. The word “Aryan” matches mainly its Eastern group, which is the cause of the
languages known as “satem” (according to their way of saying, “hundred“) in other words the
Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages.4) And finally, the displacement of the poles is not the
single cause of the complex process of the big glaciations.The assumption of the brutal
inversion of the climate by sudden displacement of the earth axis is drawn aside by the
current scientists.What there is rather, it is a cyclic and continuous displacement of the earth
poles.The phenomenon of the gigantic tidal waves (some tsunamis) is besides independent of
this slow displacement of the poles. It has, on the other hand, contributed to the displacement
of the polar glaciations, and therefore to the consecutive thawing of the former ice sheets.
The thawing of the ices caused isostatic tectonic phenomena of the kind collapse of new
ocean bottoms under the weight of water, and the rise of the platforms released from the
weight of the ices. These are especially these phenomena which provoked volcanism and
earthquakes causing the enormous tidal waves in question.
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APPENDIX No. 8.
NEW RESEARCHES ON HYPERBOREA.
HYPERBOREA AND THE ORIGIN OF WHITE RACES according to Edwards Schure, the
great initiates.
" The four races which share the globe today are daughters of varied lands. Successive
creations, slow elaboration of the earth in labor, the continents have emerged from the seas
at great intervals of time, which the ancient priests of India called interdiluvian cycles. During
thousands of years, each continent produced its flora and fauna, culminating in a human race
of a different color.This division of mankind into four races was accepted by the oldest priests
of Egypt. They are represented by four figures of different types and skin colors in the
paintings of the tomb of Seti I at Thebes. The red race bears the name Rot; the Asiatic race
with yellow skin, Amu; the African race with black skin, Halasiu; the Lybico European race
with white skin and blond hair, Tamahu -- Lenormant, History of the Peoples of the Orient,
Vol. I.[The areas surrounding] the glaciers of the arctic regions witness the advent of the white
race. The latter are the Hyperboreans of whom Greek mythology speaks. These sandy-
haired, blue-eyed men came from the north through forests illuminated by the aurora borealis,
directed by bold leaders and guided by clairvoyant women. Shaggy hair of gold, and eyes of
azure: these were their predetermined colors. This race is to invent the worship of the sun
and of the sacred fire, and will bring into the world the longing for heaven. Sometimes these
people will rebel against heaven to the point of wishing to climb up to it; at other times they
will bow before its splendors in absolute adoration.
Like the others, the white race also had to tear itself away from the savage state before
becoming aware of itself. Its distinctive characteristics are the love of individual freedom,
reflective sensitivity which creates the power of sympathy, and supremacy of the intellect,
which gives the imagination an idealistic and symbolic turn. The need for freedom, coupled
with that of sociability created the clan, with its elective principle. Visionary imagination
created ancestor worship, which forms the root and center of religion among white
people.The social and political principle is obvious the day some half-savage men, besieged
by an enemy people, instinctively assemble and choose the strongest and most intelligent
among them to defend and lead them. On that day society is born. The chief is a king in
embryo; his companions are future noblemen. The deliberating old men, unable to march,
already form a kind of senate or assembly of elderly people. But how was religion born?
Among savage people it is the woman who, in her excitable sensitivity, first senses the
spiritual, affirms the unseen. Let us now consider the unexpected and enormous
consequences of an event similar to the one about which we are speaking. In the clan, in the
tribe, everyone is talking about the marvelous event. The oak tree where the inspired woman
saw the vision, becomes sacred. She is taken back to it, and there, under the hypnotic
influence of the moon, which plunges her into a visionary state, she continues to prophesy in
the name of the great ancestor. Soon this woman and others like her, standing on rocks in the
middle of forest glades, at the sound of the wind and the distant ocean, call forth the
diaphanous soul/minds of ancestors before quivering crowds who, charmed by magic
incantations, see them or think they see them amidst the mists drifting in the moonlight.
Ossian, the last of the great Celts, will summon Fingal and his companions in the gathering
clouds ."
Our comment.
Ossian and Fingal??? Let us recall nevertheless that the work of Macpherson is a literary
hoax even if it is not lacking in artistic qualities a little in the vein of that of our female
colleague Marion (Zimmer Bradley: cf. her splendid Mists of Avalon).Edward Schure (born in
1841) was initially a musical critic who devoted himself and with competence, to the history of
the music (History of the Lied, the musical drama).Unfortunately, he took up the responsibility
of what had been for Fabre d'Olivet only a recreational pastime, or a poetic fiction on the
Perennial Tradition. His long poetic novel about “Ram“ indeed offered an explanation
tempting, but completely imaginary, of the convergence points being able to exist between
Druidism and Brahmanism. And for that reason Ram was admitted by Schure as one of the
“Great initiates“ following the example of Siddhartha Gautama and of the high Rabbi
Yehoshua bar Yosef known as “from Nazareth” or more exactly the Nazarene (that is not the
same thing!)Perennial tradition… Perennial tradition! How many stupid remarks were written
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in your name including Rene Guenon!Schure, on the other hand, deserves mitigating
circumstances as regards races, because he was a supporter of Dreyfus, contrarily to what
we could have expected from him in a century still very marked on all sides by the racial
assumptions.He also deserves our whole indulgence as for his erroneous assertions on the
ancient Egyptians, because Egyptology was still at its beginnings in his time.Reth meant
“men” in Egyptian language.Aamu lived in the Sinai and Negev deserts.The big mistake of
Schure is also to have systematically thought “initiation” where it was only in fact, either
constructive cogitation, or inspiration, or spiritual enlightenment. And he seems to have
uncritically accepted the “deceptions” of Macpherson as well as his “Ossianic” poems.
(VERY TEMPORARY) CONCLUSION.
As already explained, Hyperborea therefore, is a name come from the Greek Huperboreia =
(Country) located in the north. Roughly speaking all continental Europe. Today it is the North-
West Europe that we designate under this word, whereas for the ancient Greeks the name of
Hyperboreans (Huperboreioi) was indistinctly applied to various continental peoples and to
many vaster territories; including as well the Balkans as Northern Europe and the future
Russia to the Ural Mountains (Riphaioi mounts).This stricter Hyperborea was strongly
mythologized as soon as Antiquity. The main reason is the precise memory of recent facts,
but increasingly vague with regard to the oldest ones, in the collective memory.Memory of the
not-written traditions always progressively grows blurred as evoked events are more and
more far in the past. The facts of the Bronze Age are still rather faithfully kept, those of the
Neolithic Era are much vague, and those of the Mesolithic era even more.These ancient
myths were evoked thereafter at various times.
IN ORDER TO TAKE DREAM INTO ACCOUNT IN ALL THAT, we therefore prized to present
the Celtic facet of all these traditions, which have their origin in a mixture of Indo-European
traditions and of “hyperborean” memory.
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APPENDIX No. 9.
HISTORICAL HYPERBOREA (in the scientific meaning of the word).
So this is the dream part reported by the Greeks, but like all legends, this part of the dream
has a basis made of realities.
And this background of reality is certainly more historical than the Exodus or Moses.
Around 6000 BCE, just below or south Arctic Circle (300 km away), there existed a civilization
of hunter-gatherers, a true civilization, far more advanced than was once thought.
Its emblematic site, still visible today (unlike those of Moses' Hebrews), is a fortified village
that is astonishing for its latitude and for the fact that it was inhabited by a hunter-gatherer
population, whereas sedentarization and the need for fortifications are supposed to have
appeared only with Neolithic and agriculture. It apparently dates from the Stone Age and is
located on the right bank of the Amnya River in western Siberia, around 5 kilometers from the
village of Kazym.
Located on a sandy spit overlooking the marshy river valley, the site is made up of 10 dips
probably corresponding to the locations of houses, which were protected by a double line of
defensive fortifications. 50 meters further east, traces remain of another group of 10 houses,
with no defensive structure, and virtually contemporary (Amnia II).
Semi-buried houses were rectangular in plan, with floor areas ranging from 13 to 41 m² and
depths of up to 1.8 meter. They had a chimney in the middle, which suggests that they were
inhabited for a long time. The site was destroyed several times by fire, probably as a result of
violent clashes, which somewhat contradicts the peaceful character traditionally attributed to
Hyperboreans. Or perhaps they were warriors from elsewhere. Greek legends also mention
the Hyperboreans' concern to ensure the safety of their female offering bearers on their
journeys via Delos to the site of Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia (a mere hypothesis).
"Those writers who place them nowhere but under a day which lasts for six months, state that
in the morning they sow, at mid-day they reap, at sunset they gather in the fruits of the trees,
and during the night conceal themselves in caves. Nor are we at liberty to entertain any
doubts as to the existence of this race; so many authors are there who assert that they were
in the habit of sending their first-fruits to Delos to present them to Apollo, whom in especial
they worship. Virgins used to carry them, who for many years were held in high veneration,
and received the rites of hospitality from the nations that lay on the route; until at last, in
consequence of repeated violations of good faith, the Hyperboreans came to the
determination to deposit these offerings upon the frontiers of the people who adjoined them,
and they in their turn were to convey them on to their neighbours, and so from one to the
other, till they should have arrived at Delos. However, this custom, even, in time fell into
disuse.".(Pliny H.N.Book IV,XXVI,13).
(Qui alibi quam in semenstri luce constituere eos, serere matutinis, meridie metere, occidente
fetus arborum decerpere, noctibus in specus condi tradiderunt. nec licet dubitare de gente ea:
tot auctores produnt frugum primitias solitos delum mittere apollini, quem praecipue
colunt.virgines ferebant eas, hospitiis gentium per annos aliquot venerabiles, donec violata
fide in proximis accolarum finibus deponere sacra ea instituere iique ad conterminos deferre
atque ita delum usque. mox et hoc ipsum exolevit).
Whatever the case, the inhabitants of this village probably ate fish and hunted elk, reindeer
and beaver.Fragments of 45 ceramic vessels, with flat or pointed bases, have been found.
This elaborately decorated pottery was probably used to store meat and fish oil. Many tools
were made of stone, notably quartz, but flint microblades and slate projectile heads were also
found.
Greek legends about Hyperborea describe its inhabitants as happy farmers, but we'd like to
emphasize here that they seem to have been ...happy hunter-gatherers first and foremost.
We take the liberty of emphasizing the case of these Hyperborean hunter-gatherers because
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it challenges the traditionally accepted idea that permanent human settlements with
monumental architecture and the establishment of complex social structures are linked to the
appearance of agriculture.
These discoveries, combined with other very early examples such as the Göbekli Tepe site in
Anatolia (astonishing hunter-gatherers as indeed were the builders or regular visitors of this
site), force us to re-evaluate our linear conception of the evolution of human societies (from
simple to complex).
Paleobotanical and stratigraphic examinations reveal that the inhabitants of western Siberia at
the time had a sophisticated lifestyle based on the abundant resources of the taiga.They
caught fish in the Amnya River and hunted elk or reindeer with spears made of bone or stone.
And to preserve their surplus fish oil and meat, they made elaborately decorated pottery.
And now, for those who are troubled by the question (our Druidism having been, given its
fierce desire to acquit the Barbaricum of our ancestors) the first of history's woke or cancel
culture movements (in the literal meaning of the term, i.e. wishing to do justice to the
Barbaricum), WHAT WE HAVE TO THINK ABOUT THE RACE OF THESE HUNTER-
GATHERERS? In order to put an end to any innuendo or unspoken words on this subject,
here are a few chronological reminders about the genetic stock of Europeans in the usual
sense of the word.
A - 400,000: Neanderthals (for those obsessed....maybe blue-eyed, fair-skinned and with
blond or reddish hair in some cases). Approximately 5% of the European genome.
B - 45,000: Cro-Magnon man.
Western European hunter-gatherers haplogroup I or C (for those obsessed... dark skin, blue
eyes).
Eastern European hunter-gatherers Haplogroup R1a R1b (for those who are obsessed... fair
skinned).
Caucasian hunter-gatherers haplogroup R1a.
C -7000: Anatolian farmers haplogroup J (for those who are obsessed... fair skinned).
Agriculture/breeding.
C -5000: Indo-Europeans or Yamnyas, haplogroup R1b.
Southern Ukraine and Russia.
Horse and cattle taming.
Wheeled vehicles.
Bronze tools and weapons.
Migrations of warrior horsemen (for those who are obsessed: SOME may have had blue
eyes, fair skin and blond or red hair). Genetic contribution to previous ethnic mixes: as if there
had been one man (of these warriors) for every 14 women.
The end result of these additions of different genetic stocks is therefore still a people or
peoples with white skin, sometimes/often blue eyes and brown, light-brown or blond hair,
even almost white in some northern parts. IS THERE ANY OTHER CONCLUSION TO BE
DRAWN?
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ERRATUM.
MODERN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
ABOUT HYPERBOREA.
The modern scientific research highlighted the inexorable advance, though interrupted by
drops, of the sea invading the continental shelf released once more following the last
glaciation, that of Würm. The phenomenon began as soon as the Mesolithic period (too
distant a period so that any memory could be kept about that in the collective memory of
mankind in the area at the time). But it continued during the Neolithic era and until the middle
of the historical period.This peril of the sea therefore prevailed during nearly nine thousand
years, in other words, since unmemorable times, but to the dawn of History itself.The
disasters these tidal waves caused, would it be only during the last two thousand years
(Bronze Age and Iron Age) remained therefore in the memories and have fed various
traditions.
The German and Danish specialists endeavored to reconstruct even to map this moving of
Northern European coasts line; according to the geophysical phenomena, connected but not
always synchronous, which have occurred since the post-glacial Mesolithic era, and until the
Iron Age.First phenomenon: the intermittent warming causing the thawing of the ice caps and
causing the rise of North sea water, or the rebalancing of those of the Baltic, sometimes
inland sea sometimes sea connected with the Ocean.Second phenomenon: the isostatic
movement of slow rise of emerged lands, as a postponed reaction resulting from the
lightening due to the thawing of the ice caps.For the time previous to the cataclysm having
started the movement of the Sea Peoples, the main differences were the following ones.In the
north of Jutland, the group currently isolated by the Limfjorden had four islands and/or small
islands. The two islands were located, the one in the west, the other in the North-East. The
two small islands were positioned between these two islands. This insular set was surrounded
by water only at high tide; at low tide, some vast expanses of quicksand united the islands
together as well as with the future Jylland (Jutland).The Danish Archipelago was less
fragmented than currently. The German island of Fehmarn for example was united to
Holstein’s coasts.The almost continuous alignments of the islands of Western and Eastern
Friesland, from Texel to Wangerooge even Mellum; and of the Northern Friesland, from
Neuwerk and Trischen to Fanoe; are the final remains of the line of what formed then the sea
front (at high tide); while the watermark of low tide uncovered spaces of quicksand down to
approximately - 20 meters. The breaking of the line of dunes, of which these chains of islands
are the vestiges, was the result, disastrous, of repeated sea encroachments between - 1300
and - 1250.Offshore of this sea front, the bank of Heligoland formed an island, named later
Hertha by the Germanic peoples (see Atlantis by Jurgen Spanuth).This future Hertha forming
a salient of this alignment was perhaps the fortified site of the royal city called “Basileia” (the
royal palace) by Plato, in his evocation of Atlantis (Critias).
The scale of the disaster due to this sea encroachment was worsened by the fact that som
gigantic tidal waves blocked then the mouth of the rivers going out of the low plains of the
future Netherlands, or of the North Germany. Hence huge and long-standing floods. These
major encroachments continued besides until approximately - 800. Then some more limited
fits happened, until the time of the Early Middle Ages. Erosion of the sandy islands called
Toliapis and Counos by Ptolemy, of which the constantly submerged shallow waters of the
Godwin Sands and of the Dogger Bank remain only.Sea invasion, changing the Flevo Lake
into the gulf of Zuyder Zee, but also digging the bays of Jade, and Dollart as well as the
Lauwers Sea.Rise in the water level of the Kattegat and of the Fehmarn Belt, complicating
the cutting of the archipelago of Denmark; so much so that this penetration of the Baltic Sea
was named, as soon as Antiquity, Codanos * Copnos. Hence the Codanus sinus of the Latin
geographers (derived from the Celtic adjective codanos/-a/-on which meant “fractionated, with
many ramifications“).To quote only the marine transgressions undergone by this part of
Europe…
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TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THE DREAM STILL.
Heligoland doesn't form part of Celtic mythology but of Germanic mythology since it was
devoted to the god or demon * Forseti (what means “who chairs, who presides”) Germanic
interpretation (Cimbrian? Teutonic?) of a druidic god or demon not very surely identified.
* At least for saint Willibrord (according to Alcuin). The exact Latin sentence is : “non est deus
quem colis, sed diabolus, o rex etc.etc…”What means in our good old national language
something like “the object of your worship, o King, is not a god but a devil, etc., etc.” ….It is up
to our readers to see and to choose! God or devil? Neither one nor the other? Or both at the
same time?
And let us come therefore now more precisely to the islands of the god-or-demons of
goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia) north of the World in the Irish mythology.
Murias.As all the neo-druids must know , Murias seems to be derived from mori = sea > muir
in Gaelic language (its old Celtic genitive was morios, Goidelic variant morias).To come to the
Goidelic Murias of the Irish tradition we may suppose the existence of an intermediate Celtic
form of *Moriassos type according to an initial name of the kind *Morios.If the meaning of the
name seems to be rather clear, its geographical identification is not assured.One of the
islands of the North-West of Danish Archipelago is called Mors. Its separation by a small
branch of the Limfjorden is due to a sea encroachment relatively recent. We therefore have
there a possible localization, since the site is compatible and the name
also.Findias.Celtologists think that Findias meant “the white one“ a word resulting from the
Celtic adjective uindos/-a/on = white. To lead to the Goidelic Findias, we can suppose the
existence of an intermediate Celtic name of *Uindiassos type according to an initial name of
the kind *Uinda.Whereas the old island of North-West split up, a sand barrier beach was
formed and united in only one emerged land the future island of Thy, by including the two
small islands in question. And especially the North-West island, current territory of
Vendsyssel-Thy, which ends in Cape Skagen. This cape was perhaps the Promuntorium
Celticae Lytarmis of the ancient geographers. The site of the old island of the North-West is
still called, besides, Vendsyssel, and the sands of Jammerbugt, as well as these of the
beaches of Skagen, are white. We therefore have there still a very strong probability allowing
us to compare the mythical Irish island of Findias to the Vendsyssel in question.Probability
which becomes certainty when you realize that this land is not very distant from Mors in
fact.We know in addition that the neighboring Jutland was called by these ancient
geographers Chersonnesus Cimbrica in Latin, a name itself derived from the Greek “è
Kimmérikè Khersonnesos“.This arrival of Kimmérioi, ancestors of the “Cimbri“ is, of course,
clearly later than the departure of a section of Danuna or Denyen during the migration of the
famous “Sea Peoples “. They would have occupied the relative gap due to this one, during
their movement towards the west under the thrust of the Scythians which happened a few
centuries later.However it is known that there was then a Celtic-speaking noble class
managing Germanized peoples (Danes, etc.). All confused by the Romans under the name of
Cimbri, due to the Celtic play on words : cimbroi = money extorters, robbers, with the
ethnonym *Cimroi resulting from the evolution of Cimmerioi. Nothing to do therefore with the
Cymri ex Combroges of Wales.Let us also note the possibly Celtic name given then to the
future Jutland : Mentonomon.Irish mythology gives us Murias as the origin of the famous
cauldron, of the god-or-demons of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Danu (bia).However it
is in Denmark precisely that we found several cauldrons dating back to the Cimbrian period,
and particularly the most beautiful and best preserved of all, that of Gundestrup.Two
certainties on Murias and Findias invite us to seek in the same direction Falias and Gorias.
Falias.It is not too difficult to propose a maintainable assumption as regards Falias. We can
indeed think of the whole formed by Lolland and Falster islands, by simple name analogy
(Falster) first. Assumption, but plausible nevertheless, considering the relative geographical
proximity.
Gorias.To locate this island of the Irish tradition precisely is more difficult.First of all, let us
point out that there exists in the Arthurian literature a well-known island called Gorre, that of
the king Baudemagus father of Meleagant. His kingdom is indeed an island since it is
surrounded by water and is accessible only in two places: the “water bridge” and the “sword
bridge.” What Chretien de Troyes tells us about it (he calls it the country of no return, the
kingdom from which no stranger returns) evokes rather an island not located in the North of
the world but an island of the blessed located in the West.The very name of Baudemagus
contains the Celtic “magus” that we find in two of the other names of the Celtic hereafter: Mag
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Mell and Findmag. A well, being used as a gate looking onto this next world, is mentioned in
the life of St Patrick according to Tirechan. The two magic bridges providing access to the
kingdom of Gorre resemble besides incredibly the bridges evoked by certain medieval Irish
visions of the other world and particularly of the infernal world, of St Patrick’s Purgatory type
or of vision of Adamnan type. But if we want to remain coherent with the sure location of
Murias, Findias, and Falias, it is necessary for us to seek in the same zone. It is known that a
Celtic word parallel to Gorias, the word Gorta, could exist. And we would therefore find
oneself there on familiar ground , with a geographical term meaning salient, rocky
promontory, since such is the meaning of the Irish derivative gert = rocky promontory, similar
to cert = rock.In spite of what we could previously say about it, we cannot avoid the thought it
is perhaps the island called in the past Bertha, then Heligoland (Sacred Land). This sacred
island of the Germanic paganism was indeed of the ones which were stricken by the sea
encroachments, and, moreover, it forms the very site of the Basilia of Timaeus and of the
“Basileia” of Plato’s Atlantis, recognized by Jurgen Spanuth.The former island, before the
sinking of its low parts, formed a salient very clearly located in front of the coastal line.
Moreover, its high zone, of which a good part remains in spite of the ravage of centuries, is
also rocky.The name of Gerta would therefore match a description of this island. The vowel
mutation making the name Gert, passing into Gort, is probably due to interference, source of
a mix-up.
Conclusion.
The four islands in question of the Irish tradition; Murias, Findias, Falias and Gorias; can be
located with a level of probability ranging from possibility to likelihood, in the country of origin
of the Danen/Denen 3250 years ago.The designation “Islands in the North of the world” being
then justified , not compared with the point of refuge of the emigrants (Ireland), but compared
with the cradle of the Celts, in the Center-North of Europe at the Hallstattian era. Which is still
more logical.
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ADDENDUM No. 1.
TERMINOLOGY IN OLD CELTIC LANGUAGE
(PROPOSITIONS AND SUGGESTIONS).
The “Irish” nomenclature (Man of Partholon, Man of Nemed, Gaileoin, etc.) is, however,
limited by definition and in every case inapplicable beyond the Neolithic era.The first thing to
be made would be, in the accounts of the Irish Lebor Gabala Erenn, to well separate, on the
one hand, mythology incorporating more or less recognizable Celtic deities, and, on the other
hand, the recollections of details of a particular Protohistory. For that, it would be necessary to
begin by restoring the right chronological order of these “conquests“ enough messed up.The
name “Sons of Mile” (Miletugenoi = children of Death or Destruction) is perhaps a nickname
evoking the misdeeds of this wave of human peopling. Mileto or Miletu means indeed “death
or ransacks“. Or then it is the same druidic idea as that which is reported by Caesar, when he
notes about the Celts that those say themselves resulting from the god-or-demon of death
and darkness. Considered by him tantamount to Dis Pater (B.G. VI, 17-18).The name Goidel
as for it means “the rough ones“.
It would also be necessary to distinguish what belongs to the Celtic tradition from what
belongs to others. Considering the frenzied manipulation in which the Christian learned men
of the Middle Ages engaged, in order to connect the Celtic ethnic traditions with the biblical
Genesis; the accounts reporting the history of the first human settlements are crammed with
Hebrew names or with references to the Middle East.The important thing would be to avoid
the well-known counter-example of the Hebraic Bible. The ethnological table (Gen. X) that the
monolatrous exegetes draw by being based on it of the descendants of the three sons of
Noah, evokes indeed only the origin of the peoples known by the Persian empire or
neighboring it. And for good reasons, the last great review of the Bible was directed by Ezra,
“Esdras,” under the reign of Artakshatra, “Artaxerxes Long-handed,” circa - 440. The natio-
ethnic data of this Jewish bible therefore reflect only in fact a dividing up diagram hardly going
back to the Bronze Age, around - 2.500.We will therefore never emphasize enough the harm
done to science, historical or other, by this will of having only the Bible or Quran as a single
source of any information. It sounds as journalists dealing with the war waged in 2011 in
Libya or Syria. From the 72 languages of the Irishman Fenius Farsaid to the French
Celtomaniac Bretons of Year II (La Tour d’Auvergne) by going through Gomer’s sons , what a
disaster for the thought!A presentation in the Celtic manner, of these phases of human
prehistory, could very well preserve the diagram of the Celtic Book of conquests on the
condition of taking the notion of “conquest” in a broader sense.But how to call the
“conquerors” in question?Paleontologists have invented Latin scientific names based on
Greek etymons to designate the various stages of hominization. It would be enough to follow
their diagram while taking the liberty to Celtize it slightly. For example, by inventing in turn
some old Celtic names transposing at the best these Greco-Latin words, to replace the non-
scientific diagram of the Book of Conquests, considering its inadequacy (it was too much
marked by the dominant ideology of its time, just like the journalists today besides).
1 PREHOMINIANS.
...................PRIMATES NOT YET COMPLETELY HUMAN.
2 AUSTRALANTHROPIANS..........(Austral apelike ones)..................DEXSOUODONICOI.
...................Australopithecus.................(Austral ape)..............................Dexsouabana.
...................Plural:....................................................................................Dexsouabanai.
.................. Paranthropus......................(Man next to)............................ Letstodonios.
...................Plesianthropus...................(Man nearby).............................Nessamodonios.
3 CHILDREN OF NEMED.
...................PROTO ANTHROPIANS.. (Primitive humans)................... ARIMODONICOI.
...................Protoanthropus.....................(Primitive man)........................ Arimodonios.
...................Homo Habilis.........................(Clever man)........................ Adsedodonios.
4 MAN OF PARTHOLON.
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....................ARCHANTHROPIANS...... (Archaic humans)................ SENAMODONICOI.
....................Archanthropus......................(Archaic man).......................Senamodonios..
....................Pithecanthropus......................(Ape-Man)......................... Abanodonios.
5. SONS OF MILE.
........PALEANTHROPIANS...........(Elder Humans)....................SENODONICOI.
...................Homo presapiens................(Pre-knowing man)................Arevedons donios.
...................Plural:..............................................................................Arevedontes donioi.
...................Homo sapiens........................(Knowing man)......................Vedons donios.
...................Plural:..................................................................................Vedontes donioi.
6............... X (missing link).
7. FIR BOLG FIR DOMNAIN AND GAILEOIN.
...................NEANTHROPIANS.................(New humans).................... NOVIODONICOI.
...................Neanthropus............................. (New man)........................... Noviodonios.
...................Homo sapiens.........................(Knowing man)................... Atevedons donios.
...................Plural:................................................................................Atevedontes donioi.
REMARKS.The erudite name of the “donios” or “gdonios” (human beings simply, only real
heir to the line - Big-foot Sasquatch and yeti being problematic and in every case numerically
null -) would be therefore ATEVEDONS GDONIOS OR DONIOS in this terminology. We
would find there, in these conditions, the Celtic root ved-/uid- = to know, knowledge, the same
one as we find in dru-uids, dru-uis, druis: druid. This designation therefore would match well
also the prehistoric Celtic peopling, of which the high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht)
formed the elite. The Greeks had besides echoed various legends about the mythical
ancestors of this Celtic-speaking settlement, under the names of Keltos, Keltine, Galates,
Brettanus, etc.; that the ancient high knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht), perhaps had the
weakness to regard as the first true Homines sapientes worthy of this name, of course, just
like in the case of Judaism (cf. its dangerous notion of a chosen people).What we find again
indeed in the Irish Lebor Gabala Erenn, with the conquest of the Fir Bolg Gauls, of the Fir
Domnain and Gaileoin. Fir Bolg in Gaelic comes from Viroi Bolcai and means impetuous and
fast men, or by a play on words “wolves” (volcoi). Here we deal with a well-known Celtic
formation, including in other places. It is one of the most adventurous Celtic groups since it
launched expeditions to Anatolia and in (future) Ukraine: the Bolcai or Volcai, of whom one
generally transcribes the name into “Belgians” or “Volques.”Their partners are also easy to
identify. The Fir Domnain Gauls are the Viroi Dumnonioi or simply Dumnonioi, that we also
find attested in Great Britain, where the Devon preserves their name. (Much later they will
found the “Dumnonia” in Armorica, roughly speaking the French Department of Cotes-
d'Armor.)As for Gaileoin, Galatai = some Gauls and even some Galloicoi also known as
Callaicoi, of whom we find another detachment in future Bulgaria, as an ethnic name of the
short-lived Galatian kingdom of Tylis; it was therefore some “Callaicans,” ancestor of the
Gallegos: Galicians of North-West Spain. (Nothing to do with the semi-Polish semi-Ukrainian
Galicia, nothing to do with the Palestinian Galilea.) The names of their kings (according to the
Irish version which, in fact, is mistaken by attributing them in a somewhat anachronistic way
to the previous settlement): Eberrios > Eber and Ariomanos > Eremon, are attested by
homonyms noticed in continental epigraphy. Eberrios is the name of a deity, Ariomanos that
of a private individual.It is impossible, on the other hand, to honestly transpose the appellation
of Neanderthalians into old Celtic, because the ancient name of the valley so called (the
Neander Valley in Germany) is in no way sure. We could nevertheless use then the name
Caveman, which would give us for example Balmodonioi or * Viamodonioi or * Cubodonioi.It
is, on the other hand, perfectly logical to transpose the “Cro-Magnon” people in * Viserodonioi
or “Men of the Vezere River.”
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ADDENDUM No. 2.
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE MAN TO COME
AND THE CONTINUATION OF EVOLUTION.
One cannot conclude this talk on the theses of new druidism without evoking the future of
mankind. After having been informed, if you did not know it already, that the Man is, currently,
the last representative of such a long line of descent, you must wonder: is this evolution
completed? Won't the Man have to give way to a “beyond man” more improved (a homo-deus
or a god-man in a way)?Thanks to the gene therapy, our species will be able to surpass its
own status and we can already today spot diseases on the embryo; it is possible to operate
on fetuses in the womb of their mother. Our children are already true mutants.The Man
becomes little by little master of his evolution.Should it be envisaged crossing some
thresholds that our Judeo-Christian moral code rejects? It is a debate strongly tinged with
ideologies, religious beliefs and dogmas. In short by conditioned reflexes or non-reflection by
definition. Eugenics is a word invented from two Greek words and means indeed
“improvement of the human populations” (eu = good and genos = birth).
The principle of vitalism is that life has particular characteristics, quite different from the ones
of the Matter. Without going as far as to ascribe it intelligence, we must admit to it a certain
force, a kind of awareness. All that is living reacts, life too. In the organization of beings the
role of the life intervenes. The brain, so often taken as an example, is itself only because it
has reacted and contributed to being formed, by a kind of cybernetic feedback. The
adaptation of the living beings to their environment is due partly to selection, of course, but
with the participation of the body. Vitalism therefore supposes an initiative of the living beings,
a true “organic intelligence” (spirit of invention?), but “of the species and non-individual“. In
that vitalism agrees with Lamarck. But in the mind of modern scientists, vitalism is free from
any metaphysics. It is only on the scientific level that its theorists show the participation of the
body in the adaptation and evolution; that becomes only a fact to note, without mingling
spiritualism or materialism in it. Because vitalism does not mean a goal nor an immanent
transcendent design necessarily. Moreover, they reject from the scientific level the idea of an
original creator or demiurge, or of an original mechanism and conclude: “the driving force of
Evolution is nature itself “.
Man is only a transient being in Evolution, not an end in itself. And for this reason it is
necessary to envisage the future being who will relay us, who will think more quickly, who will
be better (?) and will understand, perhaps, the “why” of the Evolution.At the base of these
assumptions, there is a postulate: that Man will continue to evolve. Undoubtedly the future
evolution of Man is not certain, and it is only probable; because Evolution is not automatic, it
is opportunistic. But it is quite difficult for a biologist to suppose a definitive end. All that we
saw previously show that Evolution is a general phenomenon, that Man is a temporary being,
and that there is no reason that his descent line aborts.Various practical details must be
considered for this evolution of human beings : either it will be fast, or it will be “normal “; it
will therefore lead to a new genus, either to one or several new species. An accelerated
evolution would lead in fact to the imminent appearance of a successor of Man, of a new
zoological genus. This one perhaps would not be very different from us from the point of view
of morphology, but he would have especially mental structures completely different.
Brummelkamp admits that cerebral evolution is done by leaps, by discontinuities, with
increase in the total size, the length of growth, and of the relative weight, of the brain. The
cephalization coefficient is multiplied by 1,414 at each stage; like it is currently among us of 2,
74, we can predict this future genus, this Super-Man (sic! The druids, as for them prefer the
term god-man, devogdonios in old Celtic, Latin homo-deus) would have a cephalization
coefficient of 3, 87.It can be imagined this transformation would be due to an increase in
numbers of the cerebral neurons; the successor of the current Man would have a larger brain
because he would have more neurons. Of course, it is there only an assumption, just as that
of Jerison. For this author, the biological level of evolution would be due to special neurons,
without links with body mass; but the figures he proposes are also matching successive leaps
of about 1, 4. So that we return to a qualitative increase of the brain. Intellectual faculties of
this super-Man (of this “God-Man “) will not easily be imaginable. For example, to think the
fourth dimension, to get a sixth sense, to have a moral conscience infinitely more developed
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than ours and especially some spiritual qualities unattainable to our understanding. Let us
leave to imaginative minds inventing what will be the body morphology, the extraordinary
intelligence, and the acts incomprehensible for us of the beings with a cephalization
coefficient of 3,9.
Here what the French Guy de Maupassant for example wrote in 1887, about this God-Man of
future (on this homo deus futurus).
A new being! Why not? It was assuredly bound to come! Why should we be the last? We do
not distinguish it, like all the others created before us? The reason is that its nature is more
perfect, his body finer and more finished than ours. That ours is so weak, so awkwardly
conceived, encumbered with organs that are always tired, always on the strain like locks that
are too complicated, which lives like a plant and like a beast, nourishing itself with difficulty,
on air, herbs and flesh, an animal machine which is prey to diseases, to malformations, to
decay, broken-winded, badly regulated, simple and eccentric, ingeniously made badly; a
coarse and a delicate work, the outline of a being which might become intelligent and grand
[…] Perhaps time alone has power over that Invisible and Redoubtable Being. Why this
unrecognizable, transparent body, this body belonging to a spirit, if it also had to fear ills,
infirmities and premature destruction? […] The reign of Man is over. He has come. He whom
disquieted priests exorcised, whom sorcerers evoked on dark nights, without yet seeing him
appear; to whom the presentiments of the transient masters of the world lent all the
monstrous or graceful forms of gnomes, ghosts, genii, fairies, and familiar spirits. After the
coarse conceptions of the primitive fear, more clear-sighted men foresaw it more clearly.
Mesmer divined him, and ten years ago physicians accurately discovered the nature of his
power, even before he exercised it himself. They played with that weapon of their new lord,
the sway of a mysterious will over the human soul, which had become enslaved. They called
it magnetism, hypnotism, suggestion… what do I know? I have seen amusing themselves like
impudent children with this horrible power! Woe to us! Woe to man! He has come... what he
calls himself … the… he is shouting out his name… I am listening… I cannot… repeat… I
have heard… the Horla * it is he… the Horla has come! “
* Name which undoubtedly meant in the spirit of the author something like “beyond,” the “out
from there”….implicitly….of Man. But the novel was subtitled: modern ghosts. We wonder well
why.
Our successors will be some clairvoyants for the blind men we are. But their arrival is not for
tomorrow. The zoological genera are formed all the five or six million years. As the genus
Homo goes back to approximately a half-million years (appearance of the Pithecanthropus:
Homo Erectus), we have therefore still several hundred thousand years to wait, if Evolution is
“normal.” Of course, it is possible that the Man is able one day to produce himself this “supra-
humanizing“ or in a way “supermanizing” mutation, without respecting the deadlines we can
extrapolate from paleontology; but until then, we have time, and the duty, to try to anticipate
what will happen.It is more reasonable to be satisfied to envisage the complete development
of the genus Homo. It is logical to forecast its bush shaped growing, i.e., its diversification into
contemporary or successive species. There was Homo Erectus, then Homo
Neanderthalensis, finally Homo sapiens. It does not matter the nature of their filiation, but it is
normal to expect the appearance of Homo futurus, so named because we do not know with
which characteristic to describe him [the druids, as for them, call him Devogdonios: God
Man]. He will not be more different from us than we are from previous human species. It is
possible also that he is not alone, that several other human species appear, each one having
progressed in an unequal way but we haven't reached that stage!The laws of Le Gallic predict
a deadline from 300.000 to 600.000 years for the formation of a new species of a given
genus.Therefore, if Homo sapiens goes back really only to 100.000 years, we still have plenty
of time; but if the Neanderthal Man belongs to species Homo sapiens, then Homo Futurus
[called Devogdonios by the druids, as we have already seen, Latin Homo Deus] will occur
soon. There is besides another reason to think that: it is the evolutionary acceleration. And it
will not be a natural acceleration, but the fact that Man will act very soon on his own evolution.
Currently Man differs from Ape by his awareness, because he knows he evolves. But
technological progress is too fast so that we can imagine that Man continues to remain a
spectator of his own evolution; he will cause soon changes or he will surround himself with a
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selective environment (the globalized urban life for example) which necessarily will oblige him
to evolve. It is in the nature of Man to have an effect on his nature and on Nature.
Jean Hiernaux (the biological future of Man, Brussels, 1964) considers that the vision of a
Super-Mankind in fact is less hazardous than the prediction of a Super-Man with a larger
brain; in what he is right, although they are two different phenomena: a Superman will occur
perhaps one day, but we are not intelligent enough to think him. The prediction of a Super-
mankind, on the other hand, is a concept which outwardly can be understood by more people,
it suggests that Man is already no longer an animal like the others, that his evolution will be
particular.Hiernaux draws an analogy with the apparition of Life from the Matter, then of Man
from the ordinary living cells. He is so led to think that our next evolutionary threshold will be a
state where the men have the same banal human properties individually as those of today;
but of whom the organized whole would represent a qualitative step ahead, as radical as the
transition of the inert matter to the life, and that of the Life to Man. Meanwhile, we imagine
with difficulty what the accession to a certain organization level leading to a qualitatively
different state, gifted itself with new qualities or properties, would produce. This evolution
would be therefore mainly cultural, and no longer genetic. The increasingly narrow
interdependence of human beings, the condition of their evolution since this one from now on
is based on the knowledge communication.
Arrived at this point of our talk it will be interesting to say a few words of the work of Teilhard
de Chardin ( died on April 10, 1955, in New York); because the thought of this author,
although officially Christian (even though he hardly has been in favor, in the Vatican) is very
close to the pantheism of the Hindu type. Many of his ideas indeed are found for example in
the writings of Sri Aurobindo.For this author there exists therefore an immanent-transcendent
principle including matter and life. The evolution brought out at the beginning of this part of
our book is only a secondary cause, and explains only the strict mechanical determinism.But
does science have to really be unaware at this point of the immanent and transcendent
causes?The human evolution seems well to result from a psychism pressure, of the “rise of
consciousness“ hat is noted in the animal kingdom, when one goes from the lower beings to
us.But Man is characterized not only by a larger intelligence, but also by the emergence of the
Soul/mind out of the Matter. Evolution has had Man as an end (perhaps for a temporary
end… a finality imagined in the broadest sense of the word, which admits the groping, the
trials, the errors and the failures of Nature).However, the most part of organisms, the
functional correlations, the very nature of the life, require an original principle: “there is a
minimum of finality in nature “. The adaptation is the fulfillment of an organization meeting a
purpose.... directed towards a purpose.
Of course, Teilhard de Chardin is a finalist, but he is so in a very particular way, which
resembles much a fate. He is not interested in it besides. His reasoning is based on the idea
that life went out the Matter, while keeping its material base; and for him the traditional finalist
dualism does not exist: the soul and the matter are the two faces of the same reality. Then life
has adopted an increasingly advanced organization. For Teilhard, there are immediately
Consciousness and Spirit, even in the lower beings and even in the stones! [that sounds like
some Celtic paganism explained by a druid of philosophical type!] So, there is continuity
between the genesis of the world and that of the life; Man is only one moment of the
Universe, moving towards more Spirit through more “complexification“.Teilhard goes beyond
the traditional biological evolution; since he speaks about pre-life and that he envisages the
extension of the Evolution, its end which is not Man, but God.His evolution is a universal
movement of the totality of things and beings, a movement of “complexity-consciousness“.It
will be noticed that it is a total movement there, Teilhard does not speak about individual
consciousness, but about total consciousness, of which each one of us would have a piece.
For him Man indicates the direction of the Universe, he is the arrow of the movement towards
infinity: the author wants to say towards God; ogham point (eabadh) * of Space and Time that
Teilhard defines as it follows. “The universal center, no longer of physical externalization and
expansion, but of psychic internalization, towards where the earthly Noosphere in the process
of concentration (by making more complex) seems intended to be molten in a few million
years “.An expression we may broaden to this one: “ascension of the universe towards the
divinity “(why indeed to limit oneself to the Earth? What this notion of noosphere means in
Teilhard).
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*Eabadh...Ogham point! Omega point in the writing of Teilhard de Chardin of course! What
the bards of the Isle of [Great] Britain have rather defined as the point where all opposites
equiponderate (lle bo cydbwys pob gwrth) according to the text of the first of the bardic or
theological triads of the Barddas by Iolo Morganwg.
Some extracts of the text itself of Teilhard de Chardin, very interesting in spite of his still
conformist (compared to Christianity) phraseology at certain times (God, love of Christ, etc.)
will be quoted hereafter therefore. Traduttore traditore my Italian pen-friends always say.
Some translators who have just been recognized as co-authors of the works they make pass
from a language in another, so much they betray them.The text will have been therefore re-
examined and corrected by two of my correspondents who are more aware than me of the
subtleties of the French language as regards philosophy, but who don’t agree with the
choices made previously to report the thought of this great philosopher (because in particular
of his many neologisms). As I master infinitely less well than them, the French language (I
have no shame to recognize it because French particularly the one which is used to speak
about philosophy is a rather difficult language) and that, moreover, Teilhard de Chardin is not
an author easy to understand, I therefore trusted them to improve the text traditionally used
previously to popularize the thought of this great thinker with our fellow citizens.But it will be
interesting to read before the criticisms opposed then to Teilhard by the advocates of the
traditional Christian doctrines. We will like him only more. We are here precisely facing the
mental programming of Christianity: as in every dominant ideology, including today, the
requirement for obeying compliance with the Revelation which comes first.These critics
demonstrate by no means, by reasoning or scientific argumentation, that Teilhard is wrong;
they oppose to him some passages of the Bible or some dogmas resulting from the thinking
of the Fathers of the Church. From that, they denounce the danger to fall into monism, the
tendency to “panpsychism“; accuse him not to be clearly a monogenist, “to minimize the
doctrinal substance”; to seem to forget the archetypal Evil, i.e. the sin, the revolt of Man
under the impulse of Satan against God; to have ideas here close to those of Pelagius, there
of those of John Scot Erigena [two Celtic Christian theologists close to Druidism. Editor’s
note]. His detractors finally denounce his “lack of biblical and patristic
improvement“…Through reading these criticisms, we are confirmed in the impression that,
finally, Teilhard too was perhaps rather close to the most genuine druidic thought. He had, of
course, done no research about Druidism, but about him we can mention the celebrate
proverb: “GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE“.
We find in the Christian objectors to Teilhard, the same depressing poverty of argumentation
as that which was formerly opposed to Pelagius, then to John Scot Erigena, as we can realize
it in the work of the French Dom Gougaud devoted to Celtic Christendom. No logical
reasoning, but some calls to obedience to the dogmas promulgated with quotation of such or
such “Father of the Church “ or council canon, or papal declaration with regard to those of
them who were Catholic.
ON THE POSSIBLE BASIS OF A UNIVERSAL HUMAN CREED (God and/or the World?)
It seems to me especially clear, setting aside countless minor divergences, and ignoring the
dull, inert mass of those who believe in nothing at all, that the spiritual conflict afflicting
Mankind today arises out of the division of minds and hearts into the two profoundly
separated categories of:A) Those whose hopes are directed towards a spiritual state or an
absolute finality situated beyond and outside this world.B) Those who hope for the perfection
of the tangible Universe within itself [...]Throughout human history this conflict between the
"servants of Heaven" and the "servants of Earth" has gone on; but only since the rise of the
idea of Evolution (in a way deifying the Universe) that the faithful of the earth had set out and
made their worship a true form of religion, charged with limitless hope, striving and
renunciation.Are we to disdain the world and put it behind us, or live in it in order to master
and perfect it? Mankind is torn at this moment by these two concepts or rival mysticisms and
in consequence its vital power of adoration is disastrously weakened. [....]Every two forces,
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provided both are positive, a priori are to be capable of growth by merging together. Faith in
God and faith in the World: these two sources of energy, each the source of a magnificent
spiritual impulse, of course, are capable of effectively uniting [...] For two centuries the
science of physics, preoccupied with analytical research, was dominated by the idea of
dissipation of energy (entropy) and disintegration of matter (Gustav Le Bon: Matter, hitherto
supposed indestructible, vanishes slowly through continuous dissociation of the atoms which
form it). Being now called upon by biology to consider the effects of synthesis, it begins to
realize that, parallel with the phenomenon of corpuscular disintegration, the Universe
historically displays a second process as generalized and fundamental as the first: I mean
that of the gradual concentration of its physical-chemical elements in nuclei of increasing
complexity, each succeeding stage of material concentration and differentiation being
accompanied by a more advanced form of spontaneity and spiritual energy [....] The believer
in this World will find himself compelled to attribute increasing room, in his vision of the future,
to the values of personalization and transcendence. Personalization, because a universe in
the process of psychic concentration is identical with a universe that is getting a personality.
And transcendence because the ultimate stage of "cosmic" personalization, if it is to be
supremely consistent and unifying, cannot be imagined otherwise than as having emerged by
its summit from the elements it super-personalizes as it unites them to itself.On the other
hand, the believer in Heaven, accepting this same reality of a cosmic genesis of the Spirit,
must perceive that the mystical evolution of which he dreams presupposes and consecrates
all the tangible realities and all the arduous conditions of human progress. If it must be super
spiritualized in God, must not Mankind first be born and grow in conformity with the entire
system of what we call "evolution?” [....] God awaits us when the evolutionary process is
complete: to rise above the World, therefore, does not mean to despise or reject it, but to
pass through it and sublime it.
The love of God [this word it is impossible to surpass in terms of anthropomorphism is indeed
always used by Teilhard. Editor’s note) expresses and crowns the basic affinity which, from
the beginnings of Time and Space, has drawn together and concentrated the spiritualizable
elements of the Universe [....] it is Life itself, Life in the totality of its aspirations, its struggles
and its conquests, that he must embrace [....] The sense of the earth opening and exploding
upward into God; and the sense of God taking root and finding nourishment downward into
Earth. A personal, transcendent [and immanent at the same time ] God and an evolving
Universe no longer forming two hostile centers of attraction, but entering into a hierarchical
conjunction to raise the human mass in a single tide [...] The principal business of present-day
Mankind is to achieve a breakthrough straight ahead by forcing its way over some threshold
of a higher level of awareness [...] The sacred union, the Common Front of all those who
believe that the World is still advancing: what is this but the active minority, the solid core
around which the unanimity of tomorrow must be developed? [....] Faith in the future is not
dead in our hearts. Indeed, it is this faith, deepened and purified, which must save us. Not
only does the idea of a possible raising of our awareness to a state of super consciousness
show itself daily, in the light of scientific experience, to be better founded; but, furthermore,
this idea, carried to its logical extreme, appears to be the only one capable of paving the way
for the great event we look for the manifestation of a unified impulse of worship in which
both a passionate desire to conquer the World and a passionate longing to be united with
God will be joined and mutually exalted: the vital act, specifically new, matching a new age in
the history of Earth [...] A new substance has recently appeared in the heart of the thinking
"magma" a new element, not yet cataloged but of supreme importance: We might call it
Homo Progressivus, that is to say, the man to whom the earthly future matters more than the
present....all those possessed by the Research demon (or angel) (Norman Denny : The
Future of Man).
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AFTERWORD IN THE WAY OF JOHN TOLAND.
Pseudo-druids with fabulous initiatory derivation (the famous and indescribable or hilarious
perennial tradition) having multiplied since some time; it appeared us necessary to put at the
disposal of each and everyone, these few notes, hastily written, one evening of November, in
order to give our readers the desire to know more about true druidism.This work claims to be
honest but in no way neutral. It was given itself for an aim to defend or clear the cluto (fame)
of this admirable ancient religion.
Nothing replaces personal meditation, including about obscure or incomprehensible lays
strewing these books, and which have been inserted intentionally, in order to force you to
reflect, to find your own way. These books are not dogmas to be followed blindly and literally.
As you know, we must beware as it was the plague, of the letter. The letter kills, only spirit
vivifies.Nothing replaces either personal experience, and it’s by following the way that we find
the way. Therefore rely only on your own strength in this Search for the Grail. What matters is
the attitude to be adopted in life and not the details of the dogma. Druidism is less important
than druidiaction (John-P. MARTIN).
These few leaves scribbled in a hurry are nevertheless in no way THE BOOKS TO READ ON
THIS MATTER, they are only a faint gleam of them.The only druidic library worthy of the
name is not in fact composed of only 12 (or 27) books, but of several hundred books.The few
booklets forming this mini-library are not themselves an increase of knowledge on the subject,
and are only some handbooks intended for the schoolchildren of druidism.These simplified
summaries intended for the elementary courses of druidism will be replaced by courses of a
somewhat higher level, for those who really want to study it in a more relevant way.
This small library is consequently a first attempt to adapt (intended for young adults) the
various reflections about the druidic knowledge and truth, to which the last results of the new
secularism, positive and open-minded, worldwide, being established, have led.Unlike
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which swarm, concerning the higher Being, with childish
anthropomorphism taken literally (fundamentalism known as integrism in the Catholic world);
our druidism too, on the other hand, will use only very little of them, and will stick in this field,
to the absolute minimum.
But in order to talk about God or the Devil we shall be quite also obliged to use a basic
language, and therefore a more or less important amount of this anthropomorphism. Or then it
would be necessary to completely give up discussing it.
This first shelf of our future library consecrated to the subject, aims to show precisely the
harmonious authenticity of the neo-druidic will and knowledge. To show at which point its
current major theses have deep roots because the reflection about Mythologies, it’s our Bible
to us. The adaptations of this brief talk required by the differences of culture, age, spiritual
maturity, social status, etc. will be to do with the concerned druids (veledae and others?)
Note, however. Important! What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short
life, are not (higgledy-piggledy).
A divine revelation. A (still also divine) law. A (non-religious or secular) law. A (scientific) law.
A dogma. An order.
What I search most to share is a state of mind, nothing more. As our old master had very well
said one day : "OUR CIVILIZATION HAS NO CHOICE: IT WILL BE CELTISM OR IT WILL
BE DEATH” (Peter Lance).
What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are.
Some dream. An adventure. A journey. An escape. A revolt cry against the moral and
physical ugliness of this society. An attempt to reach the universal by starting from the
individual. A challenge. An obstacle fecund to overcome . An incentive to think. A guide for
action. A map. A plan. A compass. A pole star or morning star up there in the mountain. A fire
overnight in a glade?
What the man who had collected the core of this library, Peter DeLaCrau, is not.
- A god.
- A half god.
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- A quarter of God.
- A saint.
- A philosopher (recognized, official, and authorized or licensed, as those who talk a lot in
television. Except, of course, by taking the word in its original meaning, which is that of
amateur searching wisdom and knowledge.
What he is: a man, and nothing of what is human therefore is unknown to him. Peter
DeLaCrau has no superhuman or exceptional power. Nothing of what he said wrote or did
could have timeless value. At the best he hopes that his extreme clearness about our society
and its dominant ideology (see its official philosophers, its journalists, its mass media and the
politically correct of its right-thinking people, at least about what is considered to be the main
thing); as well his non-conformism, and his outspokenness, combined with a solid
contrariness (which also earned to him for that matter a lot of troubles or affronts); can be
useful.
The present small library for beginners “contains the dose of humanity required by the current
state of civilization” (Henry Lizeray). However it’s only a gathering of materials waiting for the
ad hoc architect or mason.
A whole series of booklets increasing our knowledge of these basic elements will be
published soon. This different presentation of the druidic knowledge will preserve
nevertheless the unity as well as the harmony which can exist between these various
statements of the same philosophical and well-considered paganism : spirituality worthy of
our day, spirituality for our days.
Case of translations into foreign languages (Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, etc.)The
misspellings, the grammatical mistakes, the inadequacies of style, as well as in the writing of
the proper nouns perhaps and, of course, the Gallicisms due to forty years of life in France,
may be corrected. Any other improvement of the text may also be brought if necessary (by
adding, deleting, or changing, details); Peter DeLaCrau having always regretted not being
able to reach perfection in this field.But on condition that neither alteration nor betrayal, in a
way or another, is brought to the thought of the author of this reasoned compilation. Every
illustration without a caption can be changed. New illustrations can be brought.But illustrations
having a caption must be only improved (by the substitution of a good photograph to a bad
sketch, for example?)
It goes without saying that the coordinator of this rapid and summary reasoned compilation ,
Peter DeLaCrau, does not maintain to have invented (or discovered) himself, all what is
previous; that he does not claim in any way that it is the result of his personal researches (on
the ground or in libraries).What s previous is indeed essentially resulting from the excellent
works or websites referenced in bibliography and whose direct consultation is strongly
recommended.We will never insist enough on our will not be the men of one book (the Book),
but from at least twelve, like Ireland’s Fenians, for obvious reasons of open-mindedness, truth
being our only religion.Once again, let us repeat; the coordinator of the writing down of these
few notes hastily thrown on paper, by no means claims to have spent his life in the dust of
libraries; or in the field, in the mud of the rescue archaeology excavations; in order to unearth
unpublished pieces of evidence about the past of Ireland (or of Wales or of East Indies or of
China).
THEREFORE PETER DELACRAU DOES NOT WANT TO BE CONSIDERED, IN ANY WAY,
AS THE AUTHOR OF THE FOREGOING TEXTS.HE TRIES BY NO MEANS TO ASCRIBE
HIMSELF THE CREDIT OF THEM. He is only the editor or the compiler of them. They are, for
the most part, documents broadcast on the web, with a few exceptions.ON THE OTHER
HAND, HE DEMANDS ALL THEIR FAULTS AND ALL THEIR INSUFFICIENCIES.Peter
DeLaCrau claims only one thing, the mistakes, errors, or various imperfections, of this book.
He alone is to be blamed in this case. But he trusts his contemporaries (human nature being
what it is) for vigorously pointing out to him.
Note found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them into this place.
I immediately confess in order to make the work of my judges easier that men like me were
Christian in Rome under Nero, pagan in Jerusalem, sorcerers in Salem, English heretics, Irish
Catholics, and today racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, person, while waiting to be
tomorrow kufar or again Christian the beastliest antichrist of all the apocalypses, etc. In short
as you will have understood it, I am for nothingness death disease suffering …… By respect
for Mankind , in order to save time, and not to make it waste time, I will make easier the work
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of those who make absolutely a point of being on the right side of the fence while fighting
(heroically of course) in order to save the world of my claws (my ideas or my inclinations, my
tendencies).To these courageous and implacable detractors, of whom the profundity of
reflection worthy of that of a marquis of Vauvenargues equals only the extent of the general
knowledge, worthy of Pico della Mirandola I say…Now take a sheet of paper, a word
processing if you prefer, put by order of importance 20 characteristics which seem to you
most serious, most odious, most hateful, in the history of Mankind, since the prehistoric men
and Nebuchadnezzar, according to you….AND CONSIDER THAT I AM THE COMPLETE
OPPOSITE OF YOU BECAUSE I HAVE THEM ALL!Scapegoats are always needed! A
heretic in the Middle Ages, a witch in Salem in the 17th century, a racist in the 20th century,
an alien lizard in the 21st century, I am the man you will like to hate in order to feel a better
person (a smart and nice person).I am, as you will and in the order of importance you want:
an atheist, a satanist, a stupid person, with Down’s syndrome, brutish, homosexual, deviant,
homophobic, communist, Nazi, sexist, a philatelist, a pathological liar, robber, smug,
psychopath, a falsely modest monster of hubris, and what do I still know, it is up to you to see
according to the current fashion.Here, I cannot better do (in helping you to save the world).
[Unlike my despisers who are all good persons, the salt of the earth, i.e., young or modern
and dynamic, courageous, positive, kind, intelligent, educated, or at least who know; showing
much hindsight in their thoroughgoing meditation on the trends of History; and on the moral or
ethical level: generous, altruistic, but poor of course (it is their only vice) because giving all to
others; moreover deeply respectful of the will of God and of the Constitution …As for me I am
a stiff old reactionary, sheepish, disconnected from his time, paranoid, schizophrenic,
incoherent, capricious, never satisfied, a villain, stupid, having never studied or at least being
unaware of everything about the subject in question; accustomed to rash judgments based on
prejudices without any reflection; selfish and wealthy; a fiend of the Devil, inherently Nazi-
Bolshevist or Stalinist-Hitlerian. Hitlerian Trotskyist they said when I was young. In short a
psychopathic murderer as soon as the breakfast… what enables me therefore to think what I
want, my critics also besides, and to try to make everybody know it even no-one in
particular].
Signed: the coordinator of the works, Peter DeLaCrau known as Hesunertus, a researcher in
druidism.A man to whom nothing human was foreign. An unemployed worker, post office
worker, divorcee, homeless person, vagrant, taxpayer, citizen, and a cuckolded elector... In
short one of the 9 billion human beings having been in transit aboard this spaceship therefore.
Born on planet Earth, January 13, 1952.
275
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE BROAD OUTLINES.
As regards the bibliography of details see appendix of the last lesson because, as Henry
Lizeray says it so well, traditions that must be interpreted. It is there the whole difference which
exists between former druidism and neo-druidism.
Lebar Gabala or The Book of Invasions. Paris 1884 (William O'Dwyer)
Base of the druidic Church. The restored druidism. Henry Lizeray, Paris, 1885.
National traditions rediscovered. Paris 1892.
Aesus or the secret doctrines of the druids. Paris 1902.
Ogmius or Orpheus. Paris 1903.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION Page 004
Reminder about the former druidism Page 005
ANTHROPOLOGY Page 009
Totemism and Primordial man Page 010
Conclusion Page 016
Reminder about cosmogony Page 017
NEW DRUIDISM Page 020
History of the Earth and of the life Page 024
Conclusion Page 035
True origins of the genus Homo Page 037
The Neandertal Page 049
The last human wave: the time of men (of the true ones) Page 057
Pre-Indo-Europeans I (return on Cro-Magnon Man) Page 060
Pre-Indo-Europeans II Page 064
Prehistoric people spirituality Page 072
True disappeared Atlantis or Hyperborea Page 083
End of the world of the hunter-gatherers Page 088
Daily life during Neolithic era in the Alps Page 097
Copper Age (Chalcolithic or Eneolithic) Page 104
Aryans or Indo-Europeans Page 105
The Ligurian case Page 112
The Aryanization or Indo-Europeanization of Northern Europe Page 114
Doggerland -6500 or Atlantis? Page 115
Preliminary debate Page 118
Preliminary debate continuation Page 121
Notes Page 124
Ethnogenesis of the Celts Page 127
The Celtic Empire of Ambicatus Page 140
Marches and borders Page 146
Remarks about the celtization Page 154
New remarks by Peter DeLaCrau on the way in which the celtization took place Page 168
Druidic religion (evolution and revolutions) Page 177
The chosen (by the gods) language Page 191
Individual opinion of the dikastes John Piers Martin Page 197
Celtic languages from a scientific point of view Page 200
Short glimpse of Celtic literature Page 203
The Bible of druidism: short list of the main stories or manuscripts in Ireland Page 208
Role of the Celtic woman in these stories Page 213
True ogham: the Celtic runes Page 215
The divination with letters Page 220
Oghamic heresy in Ireland Page 221
Conclusion on the (ancient) druidism Page 223
Appendix No. 1 How to cast cisalpine runes? Page 227
276
Appendix No. 2. True history of Ireland Page 234
Appendix No. 3. Christian delirium as regards History Page 237
Appendix No. 4. The book of the conquest of Ireland Page 243
Appendix No. 5. Hyperborea according to the Greeks Page 251
Appendix No. 6. Hyperborea according to Paul Le Cour Page 254
Appendix No. 7. Hyperborea according to Serge Hutin Page 256
Appendix No. 8. New research on Hyperborea: Hyperborea according to Schure Page 258
Appendix No. 9.Historical Hyperborea (in the scientific meaning of the word) Page 260
Erratum. Modern scientific research about Hyperborea Page 262
Addendum No. 1. Terminology in old Celtic language (propositions suggestions) Page 265
Addendum No. 2. Assumptions about the Man to come Page 267
Afterword in the way of John Toland Page 272
Bibliography of the main lines Page 275
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
1 Quotations from the ancient authors speaking about Celts or druids.
2 Various preliminary general information about Celts.
3 History of the pact with gods volume 1.
4 Druidism Bible: history of the pact with gods volume 2
5 History of the peace with gods volume 3.
6 History of the peace with gods volume 4.
7 History of the peace with gods volume 5.
8 From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 1
9 Irish apocryphal texts
10 From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 2.
11 From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 3.
12 The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 1 (druidic mythology).
13 The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 2 (druidic mythology)
14 The hundred ways of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 3 (druidic mythology).
15 The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 1.
16 The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 2.
17 The druidic pleroma: angels jinns or demons volume 1.
18 The druidic pleroma angels jinns or demons volume 2
19 Mystagogy or sacred theater of ancients Celts.
20 Celtic poems.
21 The genius of the Celtic paganism volume 1.
22 The Roland’s complex .
23 At the base of the lantern of the dead.
24 The secrets of the old druid of the Menapian forest.
25 The genius of Celtic paganism volume 2 (liberty reciprocity simplicity).
26 Rhetoric : the treason of intellectuals.
27 Small dictionary of druidic theology volume 1.
28 From the ancient philosophers to the Irish druid.
29 Judaism Christianity and Islam: first part.
30 Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 1.
31 Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 2.
32 Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 3.
33 Third part volume 1: what is Islam? Short historical review of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and
SHAR.FIQ.MAD.
34 Third part volume 2: What is Islam? First approaches to the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and
SHAR.FIQ.MAD.
35 Third part volume 3: What is Islam? The true 5 pillars of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and
SHAR.FIQ.MAD.
36. Third part volume 4: What is Islam? Sounding the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and
SHAR.FIQ.MAD.
37. Couiro anmenion or small dictionary of druidic theology volume 2.
277
Peter DeLaCrau. Born on January 13, 1952, in St. Louis (Missouri) from a family of
woodsmen or Canadian trappers who had left Prairie du Rocher (or Fort de Chartres in
Illinois) in 1765. Peter DeLaCrau is therefore born the same year as the Howard Hawks
movie entitled “the Big Sky.” Consequently father of French origin, mother of Irish origin: half-
Irish, half- French. Married to Mary-Helen ROBERTS on March 12, 1988, in Paris-
Aubervilliers (French department of Seine-Saint-Denis). Hence three children. John Wolf born
May 11, 1989. Alex born April 10, 1990. Millicent born August 31, 1993. Deceased on
September 28, 2012, in La Rochelle (France).Peter DELACRAU is not a philosopher by
profession, except taking this term in its original meaning of amateur searching wisdom and
knowledge. And he is neither a god neither a demigod nor the messenger of any god or
demigod (and certainly not a messiah).But he has become in a few years one of the most
lucid and of the most critical observers of the French neo-druidic or neo-pagan world.
He was also some time assistant treasurer of a rather traditionalist French druidic group of
which he could get archives and texts or publications.
But his constant criticism both domestic and foreign French policy, and his political positions
(at the end of his life he had become an admirer of Howard Zinn Paul Krugman Bernie
Sanders and Michael Moore); had earned him, moreover, some vexations on behalf of the
French authorities which did everything, including in his professional or private life, in the last
years of his life, to silence him.Peter DeLaCrau has apparently completely missed the return
to the home land of his distant ancestors.It is true unfortunately that France today is no longer
the France of Versailles or of Lafayette or even of Napoleon (who has really been a great
nation in those days).Peter DeLaCrau having spent most of his life (the last one) in France, of
which he became one of the best specialists, even one of the rare thoroughgoing observers of
the contemporary French society quite simply; his three children, John-Wolf, Alex and
Millicent (of Cuers: French Riviera) pray his readers to excuse the countless misspellings or
grammatical errors that pepper his writings. At the end of his life, Peter DeLaCrau mixed a
little both languages (English but also French).Those were therefore the notes found on the
hard disk of the computer of our father, or in his papers.Our father has certainly left us a
considerable work, nobody will say otherwise, but some of the words frequently coming from
his pen, now and then are not always very clear. After many consultations between us, at any
rate, above what we have been able to understand from them.
Signed: the three children of Peter DeLaCrau: John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent. Of Cuers.